1934 Rolls-Royce 20/25hp Drophead Coupé

Coachwork by J Gurney Nutting. Registration no. AYH 608. Chassis no. GNC42. Engine no. G7L - Estimate: £80,000 - 100,000

Notes: The Rolls-Royce 20/25hp was, of course, an exclusively coachbuilt automobile. Most of the great British coachbuilding firms offered designs, many of them unique, on the 20/25hp chassis. Some of the most widely admired - like that of the car offered here - were the work of J Gurney Nutting, a company associated with quality marques - Bentley in particular - from its earliest days and a supreme practitioner of the coachbuilding craft in the late 1930s. Founded in Croydon, Surrey in 1919, Gurney Nutting had bodied its first Bentley before moving to London’s fashionable Chelsea district in 1924, and within a few years was established as the Cricklewood firm’s foremost supplier of bodies after Vanden Plas.

The fledgling coachbuilder was fortunate in being able to recruit the established designer A F McNeil from Cunard, an acquisition that enabled it to forge an enviable reputation in the face of competition from long-established rivals within only a few years. Gurney Nutting’s work had a sporting flavour from the outset and succeeded in attracting the attention of society’s upper echelons; the Prince of Wales and Duke of York were clients, and the firm gained its Royal Warrant in the early 1930s. Daimler and Rolls-Royce had been added to the Gurney Nutting portfolio in the mid-1920s, and the fruitful association with the latter continued into the succeeding decade.
Off test on 23rd March 1934 and supplied new to one S Harvey, chassis number ‘GNC42’ wears Gurney Nutting’s perfectly proportioned, two-position drophead coupé coachwork, its classic lines of an elegance that cannot be faulted. A long chassis model, it is the only Rolls-Royce 20/25 completed by the coachbuilder with this style of body. The car has just emerged from a high quality, and necessarily very expensive, two-year restoration (bills on file). Work undertaken included a repaint and superb interior re-trim in heather ‘Bridge of Weir’ hide, while the carpeting, tonneau cover and black German mohair hood are all new. In addition, the brightwork has been extensively re-chromed and a set of five new tyres fitted. All the large tools are present. Representing the very epitome of 1930s automotive style, ‘GNC42’ is offered with old-style logbook, Swansea V5 document and a substantial file of history.

Bonhams. Important Collectors’ Motor Cars, Pioneer and Vintage Motorcycles and Fine Automobilia, 1 Dec 2008. Olympia, London. www.bonhams.com - Copyright © 2002-2008 Bonhams 1793 Ltd., Images and Text All Rights Reserved