This car that you see above is the 1935 Rolls Royce Phantom II 40/50 HP Continental “All-Weather Convertible” which was custom made for the erstwhile Maharaja of Rajkot. This is a car which is also known as the “Star of India” amongst the Rolls Royce aficionados.
This Rolls Royce will soon be auctioned for an asking price of 10,000,000 Euros. While you keep counting those zeroes suffixing the numeral One and breaking your head hard to convert it into Indian Rupees we will quickly brief you about this Phantom, er, Car.
This car is one of special cars in the vast private collection of cars belonging to Hans-Günther Zach. Zach has a private museum in Mühlheim, Germany which houses around 27 cars (24 Rolls-Royces and 3 Bentleys) many of which belong to the pre-war period. Mind you, Zach is one crazy Rolls-Royce buff and yes of course it shows.
But now, probably recession has really hit everybody real hard as that shows too because Zach is planning to sell the entire private collection of cars and it is the “Star of India” which will be auctioned for this astronomical sum. If sold at the auctioned price, this Rolls Royce will be the costliest car ever sold in the face of earth.
The body of this Rolls, as we have earlier mentioned was custom built by Thrupp & Maberly and is painted in saffron ochre finish and aluminium. This 7.7-liter pushrod straight-six is a seven-seater with the interiors also decked up in saffron, a colour regarded as auspicious in India and carries a whopping fourteen headlights, which gives the car a superior appearance.
To top it all, this car has on it an inscription which reads “An impartial ruler of men of all faiths.”
Now for the real puzzle, If Zach, being aware of the economic slowdown, still puts a huge price for his Star, then he should be equally confident that he will get a buyer for his precious procession. But, who could be the buyer, who is least affected by the economic meltdown.
