Rolls-Royce Phantom III Pillar-less Continental Touring Saloon, 1936
Rolls-Royce Phantom III
Rolls-Royce Phantom III•
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Chassis No.: 3AZ140
£109,250 GBP | Sold
The Stan West Collection, 1936 Paris Salon 1936 Rolls-Royce Phantom III Pillar-less Continental Touring Saloon Coachwork by Henri Binder Registration no. TSY 684 Chassis no. 3AZ140
- One of circa 300 surviving Phantom IIIs
- Delivered new to France
- First owned by Mr Alfred Benhaim
- Copy chassis cards available
"The most captious critic is obliged to admit that a Phantom III provides all that can be wished for in a large luxury motor-car. The comfort, silence and road-holding with really impressive acceleration and maximum speed made a combination of virtues which few cars of the time could equal." - Anthony Bird, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars , 1964. Perhaps the most outstanding luxury car of the 1930s - certainly on this side of the Channel - was the Rolls-Royce Phantom III. Introduced in 1936, the 7,340cc V12-engined Phantom III succeeded the Phantom II, the six-cylinder engine of which was considered to be at the end of its development life.
The choice of a V12 configuration was a logical one for Rolls-Royce, the company already having had considerable experience of manufacturing V12 aero engines such as that used in the record-breaking Supermarine S6B seaplane. No doubt another consideration was the need to match the multi-cylinder opposition, notably the V16 Cadillac and V12 Hispano-Suiza. A state-of-the-art design employing advanced materials and techniques such as 'skeleton' cylinder blocks with wet liners and aluminium alloy cylinder heads, the PIII V12 produced 165bhp in its debut form.
The maximum output was subsequently raised to 180 brake horsepower, which was sufficient to propel later examples to 100mph, earlier models being capable of around 90. Its engine configuration aside, the Phantom III represents an important milestone in the history of Rolls-Royce cars, being the first with independent front suspension. Including 10 experimental cars, only 727 Phantom IIIs were made between 1936 and 1940, of which around 300 exist worldwide today. The Rolls-Royce Phantom III was, of course, an exclusively coachbuilt automobile. Most of the great British and European coachbuilding firms offered designs, many of them unique, on the Phantom III chassis.
Lawrence Dalton's definitive work, Rolls-Royce, The Derby Phantoms , records that chassis number '3AZ140' was originally bodied as a (pillar-less) Continental Touring Saloon by Henri Binder. (Page 367 features a photograph of '3AZ140' on the French coachbuilder's stand at the 1936 Paris Salon.) Copy chassis cards show that the Phantom was supplied with a speedometer in kilometres; a fuel gauge in litres, French registration plates; and wiring and brackets for Marchal headlamps.
The car's first owner was one Alfred Benhaim of Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, and the chassis cards show that Mr Benhaim was still the owner in July 1951, by which time he had moved closer to the centre of the city. (Mr Benhaim was obviously a connoisseur of fine automobiles: in September 2020 Bonhams sold his 1938 Bentley 4¼-Litre at our Goodwood Revival sale.) At time the of cataloguing no other documents were to hand apart from a V5C Registration Certificate and P&A Wood's Minor Road Test and Mechanical report prepared for Stan West and dated August 2014 (perusal recommended).
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531 449 AED
