1970 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow Coupé

The motor industry's almost wholesale switch to unitary construction and, in particular, Rolls-Royce's adoption of the method for building its new Silver Shadow, meant that by the mid-1960s the market for traditional coachbuilt automobiles had been severely curtailed. Of the many hundreds of firms trading pre-war, just two - James Young and the now combined firm of H J Mulliner, Park Ward Ltd - were left to meet the demand for a coachbuilt Rolls-Royce or Bentley, though these might be more accurately termed conversions rather than 100 percent bespoke creations.

Recalling its glamorous Grands Routiers of pre-war days such as the Phantom II Continental, Rolls-Royce's final coachbuilt models - entrusted to the company's in-house coachbuilder H J Mulliner, Park Ward - were limited to just two, a two-door coupé or similar convertible, the former arriving in March 1966 and the latter in September the following year. The cars were hand-built in the best traditions of British coachbuilding using only materials of the finest quality, including Wilton carpeting, Connolly hide and burr walnut veneers, a necessarily lengthy process that took all of 20 weeks for the saloon and slightly longer for the more complex convertible. This painstaking attention to detail resulted in a price some 50% higher than the standard Silver Shadow's. Nevertheless, demand for these more glamorous alternatives to the much more numerous Shadow was strong right from the start, a state of affairs that resulted in them being given their own model name - 'Corniche'- in March 1971.