Ever wonder how the Rolls Royce cars got their colourful names? Here’s a quick guide to how the marque’s beautiful cars were christened.
Silver Ghost
Manufactured early on in the company’s history, the Silver Ghost came to life as the ‘40/50 hp’, as this was its RAC power rating. After the company won the Tourist Trophy in 1906, however, Managing Director Claude Johnson decided that he could capitalise on the company’s newfound reputation with a new marketing approach. He took a 40/50, painted it with aluminium paint and added silver plate to the car’s metal detailing. He named the car the ‘Silver Ghost’, and took it on a 14,371 mile publicity tour which cemented its glamorous new reputation.
Phantom
In the mid-20s the 40/50, or Ghost, was replaced by a new model. The job of naming it once again fell to Claude Johnson, and he looked to the great poets for inspiration. Wordsworth provided the answer, and Johnson took the name from the poem which begins:
SHE was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleam’d upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment’s ornament:
To Johnson, it seemed the perfect reflection of the new car’s beauty and grace, and so the Phantom was born.
Wraith
Rolls Royce introduced another new model in 1938 but, with Johnson dead, the car was more prosaically named the Wraith to fit in with the names of its predecessors. It was, however, officially titled the ‘Silver Wraith’ to encourage links with that first, pioneering model.