Rolls-Royce has always had a problem with sports cars. Take the new £200,000 Ghost, launched at the recent Frankfurt motor show. With a 0-60mph time of 4.7 seconds, this 563bhp, 18ft-long behemoth will be fast, certainly. But a sports car?
Sadly, the sporting half of Britain's most distinguished car maker died in Britain's first air crash in 1910. Had he lived, Charles Rolls, gentleman, entrepreneur, pioneer aeronaut, racing driver and all-round daredevil would have been the perfect foil to Henry Royce's fastidious and cautious engineering excellence.
Royce wasn't much of a hellcat, suffering ill health and preferring to stay at home in West Wittering, Sussex, or his hideaway in the south of France. While other car makers felt that racing improved the breed, Royce didn't and thought it could bring motoring into disrepute.
All the same, Royce was not unaware of the reputation its rival Bentley was building, particularly after four Le Mans 24 Hours victories between 1927 and 1930. In addition, by 1925 the glorious-but-slow Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost had been replaced by the overhead-valve Phantom I – a better car, but not much faster. Rolls was also facing stiff competition not just from Bentley, but also Napier and Hispano-Suiza.
So it was in the interests of competitive advantage that Royce ordered his experimental department to make a foray to the sporting side of life and bring back a model "with a bit of fizz".
The result was the EX series of experimental cars, starting with the Barker-bodied Phantom I-based EX10 which, despite its tuned engine, struggled to stir the senses or bother the wrong side of 86mph. A redesign gave better results and spurred three more EX models; 15, 16 and 17EX, bodied respectively by Hooper, Barker and Jarvis of Wimbledon. Although 15EX was written off in a high-speed crash on the Continent, the last two completed factory testing and were sold.
So it was that on December 22 1928, with 4,350 testing miles on the clock (half of it without bodywork), EX17 was delivered, resplendent in striking blue with matching blue upholstery, to the 33-year-old Maharaja Hari Singh Bahadur, ruler of the state of Jammu and Kashmir in India, whose family owned 26 other Rolls-Royces. The build sheets are still available through the Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts' Club and show EX17 was despatched at a total discounted price of £2,034 3s 10d.
Looking at it today, this ocean liner of a car is imposing to the point of intimidation. Its twin P100 lamps (an extra £22 in 1928) are myopically close together, the radiator impossibly tall and the bonnet as long as the view of the Essex marshes where we are trying to prove those sporting credentials.
Sporting being an elastic concept, it follows that things have changed somewhat in the intervening 81 years. Perhaps in pre-Second World War India sporting meant the ability to outpace a tiger or rampaging elephant.
You need the same order of pluck to drive EX17 at anywhere near its maximum. For a start, it's heavy. The driving position is better than most rivals, with some clearance between the driver's shirt buttons and the steering wheel, but that wheel feels bolted through bedrock at a standstill and at low speeds you have to put your back into shuffling. Cornering is a workout, a three-point turn exhausting.
The mighty 7,668cc six-cylinder, twin-plug overhead-valve engine is as big as a chaise longue and reputedly tuned to produce about 100bhp. Its third owner, P K Mitter of Calcutta, is alleged to have seen 100mph on the AT speedometer (£11 in 1928). We're honestly not so sure, although Essex is not big enough to get the old girl up to speed. Perhaps they could close Belgium for a day?
The engine is also in a poor state of tune, sounding abnormally throaty. It pops and bangs on the over-run and, when you switch off the magneto/coil ignition systems, the explosion of unburnt fuel in the exhaust startles everyone within 500 yards.
It does move, though, and while not in the same league as a Bentley Speed Six it would more than hold its own against a 4½-litre model. You need to double declutch to even look at the four-speed crash gearbox, but it responds well to this.
The steering lightens above 20mph and EX17 starts to feel less like a barge and more like a runaway train. The cable and rod-actuated brakes work, but require a telegram ahead of an emergency stop.
What a machine, though. From the boat tail, along the rigid passenger cover, complete with its own separate windscreen, to the simple facia and that bare aluminium bonnet, it is an opulent work of art. With meticulous levels of detailing and engineering, this is as near to owning a Victorian steam engine as it gets.
With the body and engine requiring minor TLC, the Royce needs a loving owner who would use it rather than stare at it, which is death for these old machines. EX17 seems a relative bargain compared with the equivalent Bentley or Hispano-Suiza.
Lot 253, it goes under the hammer on October 28 at RM Auctions' Battersea sale and is offered without reserve with an estimated value of more than half a million pounds. Budding Mr Toads, apply here.
