Running a Silver Shadow everyday
Discussion
Balmoral Green said:
I guess the real madness is the bread & butter customer of the retail motor industry. The private buyer who is on a three year change cycle, like my in-laws. They buy a new mid-range mid-size sensible white goods car for around £15,000, and they trade it in three years later and get around one third back for it, and they go again, and again. The perfectly normal depreciation suffered each year by your average everyday new car driver is total madness compared to the modest costs of running a old Rolls Royce or Bentley as a daily driver. So maybe not such a bad idea after all.
Yes agree with that - people will winch at a 15mpg Rolls but happily accept 75% depreciation on their eurobox!
Thanks to everyone who has contributed, this has been a really useful discussion.
I have learned a few things and have a few remaining concerns.
Learning points on the purchase of a Silver Shadow 1965-69
1. I have concluded that fuel consumption would be in the region of 12mpg for a keenly driven car
2. Buy a good example i.e. FSH and evidence of cherished status, for around £10k. Avoid 'bargains' as big maintenanace bills may be attached
3. With a good example, depreciation should be minimal to zero.
4. Budget £2-4k PA to keep it on the road exluding fuel and tax (which would be free for this year of car anyway.)
5. Overall, its a costly business, but compared to my 2001 Jaguar XJR its a case of swapping depreciation of £3k PA and £200+ RFL PA for big service and maintenance bills and even bigger fuel bills. Overall the per mile cost is similar.
6. These cars are reliable as daily drivers, assuming proper maintenance, as they are so over engineered they do have a high durability factor even if they are 40 years old.
Remaining concerns
1. All weather protection. As stated, I have no garage for the car, so it will be left on a private drive way in all weathers. Some comment has confirmed that for a 40 year old car this is a concern in terms of rust. I can either buy a good car (as above a £10k car is budgeted for), run it for 2-3 years and let nature do its worst accepting that it will perhaps depreciate to £7k, or I purchase a car cover. I have some experience of these as I used one for the Mini for a year. However in those days, I didn't use the car everyday, so I'm not sure I will be bothered to remove and fit a cover every single day - it could become a bit of a chore.
2. Anti theft protection. I would welcome comments on this. Old cars are the main targets of vehicle theft these days, due to the ease of doing so. I assume that these cars are weak in this area. Can modern alarms, immobilsers etc be fitted ? How good are the lock barrels ?
3. Envy. This is a concern that I had not expected. I have assumed that a car that is obviously an elderly classic (black number plates) would be admired and respected rather than envied in a hostile way as a symbol of fabulous wealth. Comments ?
I have learned a few things and have a few remaining concerns.
Learning points on the purchase of a Silver Shadow 1965-69
1. I have concluded that fuel consumption would be in the region of 12mpg for a keenly driven car
2. Buy a good example i.e. FSH and evidence of cherished status, for around £10k. Avoid 'bargains' as big maintenanace bills may be attached
3. With a good example, depreciation should be minimal to zero.
4. Budget £2-4k PA to keep it on the road exluding fuel and tax (which would be free for this year of car anyway.)
5. Overall, its a costly business, but compared to my 2001 Jaguar XJR its a case of swapping depreciation of £3k PA and £200+ RFL PA for big service and maintenance bills and even bigger fuel bills. Overall the per mile cost is similar.
6. These cars are reliable as daily drivers, assuming proper maintenance, as they are so over engineered they do have a high durability factor even if they are 40 years old.
Remaining concerns
1. All weather protection. As stated, I have no garage for the car, so it will be left on a private drive way in all weathers. Some comment has confirmed that for a 40 year old car this is a concern in terms of rust. I can either buy a good car (as above a £10k car is budgeted for), run it for 2-3 years and let nature do its worst accepting that it will perhaps depreciate to £7k, or I purchase a car cover. I have some experience of these as I used one for the Mini for a year. However in those days, I didn't use the car everyday, so I'm not sure I will be bothered to remove and fit a cover every single day - it could become a bit of a chore.
2. Anti theft protection. I would welcome comments on this. Old cars are the main targets of vehicle theft these days, due to the ease of doing so. I assume that these cars are weak in this area. Can modern alarms, immobilsers etc be fitted ? How good are the lock barrels ?
3. Envy. This is a concern that I had not expected. I have assumed that a car that is obviously an elderly classic (black number plates) would be admired and respected rather than envied in a hostile way as a symbol of fabulous wealth. Comments ?
Coming in a little late to this topic but I ran a Shadow II for around 4 years.I did my homework before I bought and the general feeling was that if the budget can stretch to around the £10k mark then it was best to buy the tidiest Shadow II available.
I looked at around 20 cars before I bought mine and was truly shocked at how poor some of them were,and how detached from reality the sellers were too,both on their pricing and also description of their vehicle.I almost gave up thinking I could buy a nice one for around £10k when I found mine ironically quite near to where I live.
I didnt use it every day but I did put around 11000 miles on it in the time I had it and it never let me down.Average mpg was around the 12 mark,and I spent on average £1000 per year on servicing and maintenance.Insurance was £200 per year fully comp!
When I moved house my new place had an attached double garage and I liked the idea of me and my partner being able to drive into the garage and walk straight into the house so it was for that reason alone that I wanted to sell the Shadow and put my everyday car in the garage instead.
I didnt lose a penny when I sold the car but Im sorry I got rid of it.When you get a good one they are a lot of car for the money and great fun to drive.
Immobilisers can be fitted and security is quite primative on these cars.I dont think I'd bother with a full blown alarm system though.
Also I never had any negative comments about my car off anyone-old rollers arent really regarded in the same way as new ones,people(at least around here)have a bit of respect for a mint old one and there were always people wanting to have a look and chat about the car.
[/quote]
I looked at around 20 cars before I bought mine and was truly shocked at how poor some of them were,and how detached from reality the sellers were too,both on their pricing and also description of their vehicle.I almost gave up thinking I could buy a nice one for around £10k when I found mine ironically quite near to where I live.
I didnt use it every day but I did put around 11000 miles on it in the time I had it and it never let me down.Average mpg was around the 12 mark,and I spent on average £1000 per year on servicing and maintenance.Insurance was £200 per year fully comp!
When I moved house my new place had an attached double garage and I liked the idea of me and my partner being able to drive into the garage and walk straight into the house so it was for that reason alone that I wanted to sell the Shadow and put my everyday car in the garage instead.
I didnt lose a penny when I sold the car but Im sorry I got rid of it.When you get a good one they are a lot of car for the money and great fun to drive.
Immobilisers can be fitted and security is quite primative on these cars.I dont think I'd bother with a full blown alarm system though.
Also I never had any negative comments about my car off anyone-old rollers arent really regarded in the same way as new ones,people(at least around here)have a bit of respect for a mint old one and there were always people wanting to have a look and chat about the car.
[/quote]
Edited by 5 wh on Tuesday 4th March 02:23
Edited by 5 wh on Tuesday 4th March 02:23
The last two posts are absolutely spot on.
Nice motoring chaps.
On the subject of new car depreciation...
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
Nice motoring chaps.
On the subject of new car depreciation...
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
Edited by Balmoral Green on Wednesday 5th March 17:07
Yep. Buy em second hand is the thing to do now. In a sense it is just the overpriced UK market balancing itself out. A lot of manufacturers sell what was referred to in my youth as "choppers" ie registered new cars with a few miles up at a discount.Now the discounts are a lot heavier.
Edited by cardigankid on Tuesday 11th March 17:56
Is it oyster beige?
The interior looks lovely, apart from the drivers kick pad on the floor mat. These can be had for a bargain price if you get lucky. The Sunday before last, I went to the RREC rally, and the first trade marquee I went into, had a brand new set of four carpet mats for sale. They were the correct colour green carpet to match my car, and had the correct colour parchment hide piping all around the edge, with a Bentley motif on the drivers kick pad. £35 the set.
Get some Ronseal on them door cappings!
The interior looks lovely, apart from the drivers kick pad on the floor mat. These can be had for a bargain price if you get lucky. The Sunday before last, I went to the RREC rally, and the first trade marquee I went into, had a brand new set of four carpet mats for sale. They were the correct colour green carpet to match my car, and had the correct colour parchment hide piping all around the edge, with a Bentley motif on the drivers kick pad. £35 the set.
Get some Ronseal on them door cappings!
Edited by Balmoral Green on Thursday 3rd July 20:26
atomicpunk said:
It's Cotswold Beige according to the paperwork.
Looks like Jewish Racing Gold to me (popular R-R colour in certain parts of North London).Seriously, I hope you enjoy it - all R-RBs give you a wonderful sense of serenity when wafting along on a plane far above the peasants in their Ferraris.
Something I would also be rather interested in at some point in the future.
With a new baby on the way, and not having the space at the current house im under no illusion as to how un feasible it would be at this stage!
However I just wondered what the general opinion would be on LPG conversion?
I found the following site in a quick google:
http://www.go-lpg.co.uk/Shadow.html
seems it can be done quite cheaply (£1500ish in this instance)
Could it be that a converted car might work out cheaper per mile than a new eurobox when you take into account depreciation etc?
With a new baby on the way, and not having the space at the current house im under no illusion as to how un feasible it would be at this stage!
However I just wondered what the general opinion would be on LPG conversion?
I found the following site in a quick google:
http://www.go-lpg.co.uk/Shadow.html
seems it can be done quite cheaply (£1500ish in this instance)
Could it be that a converted car might work out cheaper per mile than a new eurobox when you take into account depreciation etc?
I wouldn't run one as an everyday car.
The bodies rust terribly, we spent alot of money on ours getting it resprayed and welding over the 12 years we had it.
Brakes and Suspension are prohibitively expensive when they go and they give you no warning before they do go! We've spend probably £10k with supposed "Specialists" rebuilding the brakes with kits that fail within 1000 miles.
As for the fuel you'll be lucky to get more than 10 mpg.
You have been warned.
The bodies rust terribly, we spent alot of money on ours getting it resprayed and welding over the 12 years we had it.
Brakes and Suspension are prohibitively expensive when they go and they give you no warning before they do go! We've spend probably £10k with supposed "Specialists" rebuilding the brakes with kits that fail within 1000 miles.
As for the fuel you'll be lucky to get more than 10 mpg.
You have been warned.
I know this is a big thread resurection but I wondered if anyone has done an LPG on a Silver Shadow, I have a trip planned to Bordeaux in May & we need a 4 seater and I was thinking of taking my SS but at 10 to the gallon it’s going to open my own ozone hole above me & drain my bank account at a quick rate!
If I fit an LPG system will it run ok & will it devalue the car too much?
Also how available is LPG in France?
If I fit an LPG system will it run ok & will it devalue the car too much?
Also how available is LPG in France?
classicaholic said:
I know this is a big thread resurection but I wondered if anyone has done an LPG on a Silver Shadow, I have a trip planned to Bordeaux in May & we need a 4 seater and I was thinking of taking my SS but at 10 to the gallon it’s going to open my own ozone hole above me & drain my bank account at a quick rate!
If I fit an LPG system will it run ok & will it devalue the car too much?
Also how available is LPG in France?
Presumably you're not thinking of LPG just for one trip? If I fit an LPG system will it run ok & will it devalue the car too much?
Also how available is LPG in France?
As to future values, I can only speak for myself but I wouldn't be particularly interested in a Shadow with LPG, so you might reduce youf market size, if not the value. I can't recall seeing a Shadow converted to LPG, but that isn't to say it hasn't been done.
Although I spend a lot of time in France, I can't answer re lpg availability as I don't look for it. Try asking on the France forum on here.
A couple of years ago (for a year or so) my only car was a Rolls Royce; a fetching Shadow DHC in a rather pungent shade of pillar box red. I have to admit that very genuinely I didn’t really think too hard about running my drophead as an everyday car; my parents had a neighbour that did the same for 20 years (he was a covent garden fruit trader and wanted to waft to market in comfort at 3 in the morning!) and I had a neighbour in Bath (where I lived at the time) with similar proclivities. As others have said, perhaps running your Crewe product regularly is the best thing for both you and the car - the costs probably don’t get much greater and yet they are divided out by more miles.
There is no denying that the driving experience (for better and for worse) is unique. But so is the cost of ownership. A small service could buy you a perfectly useable and enjoyable second car, a slightly larger service and new tyres buys you a decent week in the Caribbean and a large recommission on a Shadow (or a year’s running costs in the case of my Brooklands R Mulliner) buys you something very special indeed...
But there are problems - the cars are too big to easily park everywhere (most annoying when looking for a winter hibernation post if you only use the car in the summer), drink simply vast quantities of petrol (about 50p per mile in the case of anything with a 6 & 3/4 ltr engine) and remove the possibility of being able to sneak anywhere by car unnoticed. You also come out smelling of wood and leather on all occasions (who needs after shave after all) which I found a little trying for the nasal passages but others seemingly love. Although all five of my Crewe cars had little strops every so often, only one of them ever failed to proceed in a manner that left me stranded. It was another early Shadow and as such, I think such behaviour can be attributed to the normalities of classic motoring rather than anything Rolls Royce specific.
More recently, I've thought really hard about buying an early Continental R - I like the shape very much and there are some very nice examples out there for circa 30k. So off I went and drove a truly superb example being sold by Richard Biddulph’s Vintage & Prestige. The condition was superlative, the service history near impeccable and the wind noise at eighty intolerable (a friend of a friend's RT was the same on a drive around London's north circular - I searched for the window switch to check everything was closed properly before he scalded me that that was how they all were). And that neatly sums up my final point - these cars command great sums of money to buy and run and they simply aren’t good enough in light of what else is available. I am surprised so many sold when new really - did none of those London buyers think to swing past Mercedes Benz of Park Lane on the way to/from Jack Barclays for surely if they had, the cheque would have been sent to a different postal address. Or perhaps in London, where the traffic only averages 14mph, you can’t hear that the doors don’t fit properly and the sunroof whistles like the Pied Piper.
I once read that the average Bentley driver had five cars to choose from and we surely have to conclude that the minimum he needs is two - one Bentley and one other car that actually works as a car. In conclusion I think we can surmise that no one (however wealthy) drives anything from Crewe as an only car. If you are poor, you don’t buy a Rolls Royce or Bentley in the first place and if you are wealthy and foolish/sentimental, you surely have enough money to go out and buy something else that was built to satisfy the purpose for which it was sold.
There is no denying that the driving experience (for better and for worse) is unique. But so is the cost of ownership. A small service could buy you a perfectly useable and enjoyable second car, a slightly larger service and new tyres buys you a decent week in the Caribbean and a large recommission on a Shadow (or a year’s running costs in the case of my Brooklands R Mulliner) buys you something very special indeed...
But there are problems - the cars are too big to easily park everywhere (most annoying when looking for a winter hibernation post if you only use the car in the summer), drink simply vast quantities of petrol (about 50p per mile in the case of anything with a 6 & 3/4 ltr engine) and remove the possibility of being able to sneak anywhere by car unnoticed. You also come out smelling of wood and leather on all occasions (who needs after shave after all) which I found a little trying for the nasal passages but others seemingly love. Although all five of my Crewe cars had little strops every so often, only one of them ever failed to proceed in a manner that left me stranded. It was another early Shadow and as such, I think such behaviour can be attributed to the normalities of classic motoring rather than anything Rolls Royce specific.
More recently, I've thought really hard about buying an early Continental R - I like the shape very much and there are some very nice examples out there for circa 30k. So off I went and drove a truly superb example being sold by Richard Biddulph’s Vintage & Prestige. The condition was superlative, the service history near impeccable and the wind noise at eighty intolerable (a friend of a friend's RT was the same on a drive around London's north circular - I searched for the window switch to check everything was closed properly before he scalded me that that was how they all were). And that neatly sums up my final point - these cars command great sums of money to buy and run and they simply aren’t good enough in light of what else is available. I am surprised so many sold when new really - did none of those London buyers think to swing past Mercedes Benz of Park Lane on the way to/from Jack Barclays for surely if they had, the cheque would have been sent to a different postal address. Or perhaps in London, where the traffic only averages 14mph, you can’t hear that the doors don’t fit properly and the sunroof whistles like the Pied Piper.
I once read that the average Bentley driver had five cars to choose from and we surely have to conclude that the minimum he needs is two - one Bentley and one other car that actually works as a car. In conclusion I think we can surmise that no one (however wealthy) drives anything from Crewe as an only car. If you are poor, you don’t buy a Rolls Royce or Bentley in the first place and if you are wealthy and foolish/sentimental, you surely have enough money to go out and buy something else that was built to satisfy the purpose for which it was sold.
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