The Rolls-Roycesand English Daimlers reconsidered as the carrierof pseudoclassicalGreco-Roman legacies Jiro Anzai For well over a half century the Rolls-Royces' high quality and performance have been kept so unwaveringly that people outside the Crown would often mistakenly believe that the Rolls are the very cars that have been enjoying the sole loyalty of the English royalty; although the verisimilitude one would get out of the famed 'the best car in the world' advertising cliche by the Rolls-Royce Limited have been supported by their genuine quality, the fact bespeaks otherwise that it had been the English Daimler (not the German Daimler, of course)that had been having the above-mentioned marque or the privileged position of the Royal state cortage. As witness the facts, it was recently, long after the termination of the Second World War, that the English Daimlers had finally given way to the Rolls-Royce as the No. 1 Royal State Car. For allthis, however，be it of the Rolls-Royce, of the Daimler, or even of the Vauxhall, among those English motor-cars of respectable careers, one unmistakable feature has been maintained; as it happens, indeed, for the past 70 years, the Britishers are the only ones that had been sustaining that unique, unmistakable radiator shell designs that would remind one of the Greco-Roman legacies, the feature of which in most other countries would go with the much more stationary oそjetd'art, although the Britishers have been n0 less active in the still area than their continental brethren. Nowadays, however, in the stiflingclimate of so many cars being turned out of so many assembly lines in so many countries, are assuming on their respective chassis nearly a homo- geneous garb, i.e.,the trapezoidal body, or the wedge shape, from the style of which, minus identity tags, one could scarcely be diiiferentiatedfrom the others. Yes, indeed, amidst the vicious crazed circleof one firm's car's chasing after the other's almost as in a deadly dogfight, while losing one's own integrity as well as identity, it has been a c〇nstant source of relief to observe those English motorcades, as in the Daimlers' or the Rolls-Royces', stillholding their proud heads high, being crowned with such the indelible Greco-Roman architectonics, so simple in structure and yet stately beautiful beyond comparison. Of the Rolls-Royce's radiator shell, Anthony Bird and Ian Hallows have the following praise set in their latest work or the fourth revised edition of The Ro/かRoyce Motor-car, published in 1975. Ornamental flourish, executed in thin sheet iron decorated with chromium plate grilles and curlicues which reached the depths of ornate vulgarity in the 1950s, aginst which the ― 161 － Tiro Anzai classicsimplicity of the Rolls-Royce 'radiator' stood proud1ﾀ…｡ Yes, indeed, these Palladian fagades on the Rolls-Royces or the Greco-Roman flutes on the Daimlers' radiator tops are the very features, of which no other European cars have cared to keep; to be eχact,there had been times during which the Italians or Fiats and Itals, and even the American Fords had tried somewhat similar attempts on their radiator shells,but none of them lasted, neither preserved; not to speak of their ever attaining even a semblance to the Britishers' level in artistry and perfection, and in the natural sequel they did not preserve. Taking a car as a whole, in itsentirety or total configurational unity, there have been indeed plenty of other cars that have been holding their grounds against those afore-mentioned English cars. Nevertheless, no sooner had you turned your attentive eyes to the radiator grilles than you would find that not even the Mercedes-Benzes or Porsches could hardly equivocate themselves with the fore-named Britishers｡ This may seem a bit sweeping a statementけhe point, however, can easily be justified,had one taken a scrutinising look at the latest model of the Rolls-Royce's speciality car or the 'Camargue,' the highest-priced owner-driven Rolls ever produced, with her graceful body designed by the famous Italian μ7゛yθsw゛か/ininfarina(who had previously done a special saloon job on the 1951 Silver Dawn chassis). It reveals, however, that even with Pininfarina's masterly hand, not even a scratch has been added onto the traditional radiator shell; in a word, all the Italian maestro could do was to give the inelidible radiator fa;ade just a five-degree inclination, and that was all he could do on the famed shell, as though it were a sacred inner sanctum, or the Venus anady∂解ene by Botticelli! The above phenomenon, 0n retrospection, seems to have been representing a unique socio- historical as well as socio-cultural problem. worthy for a very serious consideration. For as one even littletaken to European history would recall, it happened to be no other than England that had been the last, though not the least, which had been visited by the Caesarian eがvahisseurs｡ In this writer's opinion, these seemingly Paradoχical fiχationsover the Palladian style facjad- es or the Greco-Roman flutings on the radiator shell tops, betray more than anything else the extreme degrees of great esteem with which the English aristocrats and upper bourgeois have been treating the Greco-Roman legacies ; indeed, it has been taken to such the extent and extreme that the Britishers had carried out the fluted ornamentations not just on the Bank of England's columns and a number of those Palladian edifices, oi"on the surface of Georgian teapots, but also onto these quality cars, treating them as though art quotidien et mobile, or living art on wheels. Had we considered these phenomena. simply in terms of either geographical or blood- linear proximity, the bids seem to have been fairing with those Italians or Frenchけheir works, 1)Anthony Bird and Ian Hallows, The Rolls-Royce Motor Car,(London: Batsford,1955), P. 190. 2)Ibid., P. 306. 162 The Rolls-Roycesand English Daimlers however, testifyotherwise. In fact, and more often than not, those Italian or French coach- builders' products have been the obvious fugitives from the Caesarian pasts／To attest the above statement, let us take up those Lamborghinian cars, and imagine their nearest con- figurational predecessors. Alas, as it turned out, the nearest in the con石gurational predeces- SOTS fallupon some of those Rommelian armoured cars on the African desert theatre in WW II, to which the then Italians should have been having green-eyed envies as well as inferiority complex. Somewhat interesting a parallel appearing in the present-day Germany are the very excessive angularities with which the Porsche sports or sporty cars are garbed, the configurations of which are so unlike the Porsche's wartime tanks such as Tiger and Leopard whose shape had been in a word boxy and bumpy. Though casting a psychiatric analysis garb on them and calling both the Italian and German designers of the posterior are busy in compensating for the pasts, would come near to the point of practical joking and reductio ad absurdμni，the fact remains in that that only in Great Britain these Greco-Roman legacies have walked up atop the bonnets, having shown such an expression of elan vitaL of which no equal could be found. Thus, this unique phenomenon seems worth considering, even today on which the words 'English Disease' have been frequently spoken in such a tone as though nothing would come out of Britain to save her from her toppling. Inasmuch as the writer of thisarticlehad pound- ed on the shallowness of such the view in his last article.he should be refraining from such the recapitulation here; nevertheless, he would like to add that he is having a very positive view about her future and products; so much so that he believes. on top of allthe merits of those R-crowned techniques, whether to what degrees or directions she has been reported toppling or leaning to, you may rest assured that, no matter what may happen in future, Lewis Carroll's wonderbook 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' would be kept on reading, and the very Rolls-Royces with their P alladian-s tyle facades be kept on riding in. Now, so much for this, and to further our analysis丿et us take up a case history of the Rolls-Royces｡ Firstly, it should be noted that the firstRoyce car, almost virtually handmade by the 40-year Henry Royce (1863－1933), bom of the poor millman's family, at Alwalton in Lincolnshire, as his latest dream realised, took to the road on the 1st day of April of the year 1904. Of the above mentioned fact, Bird and Hallow took trouble to mention as follows｡ With various delays…it was in April 1904 before the firsttrialrun took place though for some years the 'official'datt was given as 31 March, to avoid the tedious waggishness of the anti-motoring fraternity. While we should give credit to the two authors above for their bringing to light the fact that this historic date had been being switched for some time for a political reason, the writer of this research paper feels that the very alteration of the actual date April 1st to the end of the 3) Ibid., P. 37 －163 TiroAnzai previous month must have been carrying much more psychological implications. Moreover, thisincident can be just another evidence that would prove the importance of psychic feelings peoples all over the world would incur from certain 丘χed dates or numbers, the practices of which are prevalent even to this day. Now, returning to the brief reviewing of the Rolls-Royce careers, we note that the honour- able Charles Rolls (1877－1910), the third son of Lord Llangattock and a fanatical believer of automobilism, had been amply eχperienced in early contest-driving as well as agenting such the then well-reputed cars as French Panhards and Pugeots, had been casting his ever scan- ning eyes for the British homemades that would satisfy his patriotic wants.