Rolls-Royce and Bent­ley cars are des­tined for the world’s wealth­i­est: mul­ti­mil­lion­aires, celebri­ties, roy­al­ty, and cap­tains of indus­try. Although both brands are syn­ony­mous with ulti­mate lux­u­ry, Rolls-Royce tra­di­tion­al­ly focus­es on pure sta­tus and ulti­mate com­fort, while Bent­ley has a sporti­er char­ac­ter. Rolls-Royce presents itself in brochures and adver­tise­ments as the best car in the world and explains why in the adver­tise­ment below.

Although both brands have been owned by the Ger­man automak­er BMW Group since 1998, all Rolls-Royce vehi­cles are engi­neered, designed, and hand-built at the company’s admin­is­tra­tive and pro­duc­tion head­quar­ters in Good­wood, West Sus­sex, Eng­land. Rolls-Royce cars are still pro­found­ly British in their her­itage, design, and crafts­man­ship. The vast major­i­ty of Bent­ley vehi­cles are assem­bled and hand­craft­ed in Crewe, Eng­land, although some chas­sis and body parts are pro­duced in Ger­many and Slo­va­kia.

In this arti­cle, I dis­cuss three such par­tic­u­lar­ly lux­u­ri­ous cars whose Dinky Toys mod­els I’ve col­lect­ed in order of their release: the 150 Rolls-Royce Sil­ver Wraith, the 194 Bent­ley S2 Coupe and the 198 Rolls-Royce Phan­tom V.

The Sil­ver Wraith was the first post-war Rolls-Royce. It was made from 1946 to 1958 as only a chas­sis at Rolls-Royce’s for­mer Mer­lin engine plant, their Crewe fac­to­ry, along­side the short­er Bent­ley Mark VI. The Bent­ley was also avail­able as a chas­sis for coach­builders but for the first time could also be bought with a Rolls-Royce built stan­dard steel body.

Because only a chas­sis and engine were pro­vid­ed, buy­ers com­mis­sioned bespoke cus­tom coach­work. The Sil­ver Wraith was famous­ly used as a state lim­ou­sine by roy­al­ty and world lead­ers.

It was Royce’s metic­u­lous nature and relent­less pur­suit of improve­ment that laid the ground­work for the brand’s endur­ing phi­los­o­phy: “Seek per­fec­tion in every­thing. Take the best of what exists and make it bet­ter. And when noth­ing exists, design it.”

The body­work of the Sil­ver Wraith was made by coach­builders Park Ward, H. J. Mulliner and Hoop­er. As shown in the brochure above, every coach­builder had its own spe­cif­ic body char­ac­ter­is­tics for a Sil­ver Wraith. The pho­to of the Tour­ing Saloon by Park Ward match­es the 1955 Sil­ver Wraith Tour­ing Lim­ou­sine.

Intro­duced in the Feb­ru­ary 1959 issue of Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine, the Dinky Toys 150 Rolls Royce Sil­ver Wraith was described as “An ele­gant mod­el of ‘The Best Car in the World’ ”. It fea­tured Dinky’s new inde­pen­dent sus­pen­sion, a sparkling plat­ed radi­a­tor, bumpers, lamps and wheel hubs.

This was the first Dinky Toys mod­el equipped with inde­pen­dent sus­pen­sion and the patent num­ber of this new fea­ture is imprint­ed on the bot­tom of the base plates. From this mod­el onward, Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool began to pro­vide more new fea­tures in sub­se­quent Dinky Toys.

As stat­ed in Toyman’s intro­duc­tion, the mod­el is based on the real Sil­ver Wraith made by coach­builders Park Ward & Co. Ltd., Willes­den.

Shown above is the Dinky Toys 150 Rolls-Royce Sil­ver Wraith placed on a match­ing design draw­ing brochure by Park Ward Coach­builders.

It is imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent how faith­ful­ly Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool repro­duced the Dinky Toys 150 mod­el. The body lines in the orig­i­nal design draw­ing cor­re­spond close­ly to those of the Dinky mod­el, while the raised door lines on the mod­el pre­cise­ly match the door out­lines in the draw­ing shown above. It is a strik­ing tes­ta­ment to the skill and crafts­man­ship of the tool­mak­ers.

In 1959, the Dinky Toy 150 mod­el was also export­ed to France in com­po­nent form and assem­bled by Mec­ca­no France. It was fit­ted with a French base plate bear­ing the sales num­ber 551 and the inscrip­tion “Assem­blé en France par Mec­ca­no”, and was sold in its own plain French box, also num­bered 551. The mod­el was sub­se­quent­ly includ­ed in the Feb­ru­ary 1959 French Dinky Toys cat­a­log.

The Bent­ley S2 is a lux­u­ry car that was pro­duced by Bent­ley from 1959 until 1962. The suc­ces­sor to the S1, it fea­tured the new 6.2‑liter (6.230 cc) Rolls-Royce/Bent­ley L‑series alu­minum V8 engine and improved air con­di­tion­ing made pos­si­ble by the engine’s increased out­put. Pow­er steer­ing was also stan­dard, and a new dash­board and steer­ing wheel were intro­duced.

Of the 1,863 stan­dard S2 mod­els pro­duced, 15 had H. J. Mulliner & Co. drop­head coupe bod­ies. Of the 57 long-wheel­base cars, five had James Young bod­ies and one had a Mer­cedes-Bent­ley yacht­ing sta­tion-wag­on body by Wendler.

This mod­el isn’t found in stan­dard Bent­ley brochures. A sep­a­rate brochure was pro­duced for this mod­el by coach­builder H. J. Mulliner. Sev­er­al years ago, I came across pic­tures of a reprint­ed 1961 brochure on eBay for the Bent­ley Series 2 Con­vert­ible Drop­head Coupe by coach­builder H. J. Mulliner & Co. Ltd. It con­tains pho­tos, draw­ings, and a descrip­tion of the fea­tures of this spe­cial­ly built Bent­ley mod­el. Only 15 such mod­els were pro­duced by H. J. Mulliner & Co., mak­ing it one of the rarest cars of the world. Sev­en of them were left hand dri­ve (export) vehi­cles.

The Dinky 194 Bent­ley S2 Coupe was adver­tised on the back cov­er of the March 1961 issue of Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine. I love this beau­ti­ful typ­i­cal­ly British con­vert­ible mod­el with its detailed inte­ri­or and a dri­ver behind the steer­ing wheel. Indeed a state­ly car for state­ly homes as announced in the adver­tise­ment in Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine!

The inte­ri­or of the Dinky 194 Bent­ley S2 Coupe was accu­rate­ly repro­duced by Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool as can be seen by a com­par­i­son with the brochure draw­ing shown above. The mod­el includes beau­ti­ful maroon bench seats with a fold­ed tan col­ored hood and a wal­nut dash­board.

In the March 1961 issue of Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine, Dinky Toys announced a new fea­ture, the detailed dash­board, which can clear­ly be seen in the close-up image above.

The Rolls-Royce Phan­tom V is a large four-door lim­ou­sine that was pro­duced by Rolls-Royce from 1959 to 1968. Based on the Sil­ver Cloud II, it shared a V8 engine and Rolls-Royce Hydra­mat­ic auto­mat­ic gear­box (man­u­fac­tured under license from Gen­er­al Motors by Rolls-Royce) with that mod­el.

Rolls-Royce built the cars’ chas­sis and dri­ve­trains, with bod­ies main­ly made to stan­dard designs by coach­builders Park Ward, Mulliner Park Ward and James Young, for­mer ven­dors that were sub­se­quent­ly absorbed by Rolls-Royce. Oth­er coach­builders, includ­ing Hoop­er, Hen­ri Chapron and Woodall Nichol­son built one or two bod­ies each on the Phan­tom V chas­sis.

The engine of this mod­el is a 6,230 cc 90-degree V8 with twin SU car­bu­re­tors, cou­pled with a 4‑speed auto­mat­ic trans­mis­sion. The car had mas­sive drum brakes and a wheel­base of 3,683 mm. Pow­er assist­ed steer­ing was stan­dard. In total, only 518 Phan­tom Vs were built by var­i­ous coach­builders between 1959 and 1968, mak­ing it a fair­ly exclu­sive auto­mo­bile.

Dinky intro­duced the 198 Rolls-Royce Phan­tom V on the back cov­er of the Novem­ber 1962 issue of Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine that adver­tised a new fea­ture: open­ing side win­dows! It was also equipped with a liv­er­ied chauf­feur, who is inex­plic­a­bly not depict­ed in the adver­tise­ment. More new fea­tures start­ed appear­ing in Dinky mod­els.

The Toy­man wrote, “The actu­al Phan­tom V is man­u­fac­tured by the Motor Car Divi­sion of Rolls-Royce Lim­it­ed, Lon­don W.1, with coach­work by Park Ward and James Young, who are among the best known coach­builders in the world.”

As is clear­ly vis­i­ble in the image and draw­ing above, the Dinky 198 is an unmis­tak­able repro­duc­tion of the Park Ward design. James Young employed a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent design for the sides and the rear of the vehi­cle.

As can be seen in the pho­tos of Dinky mod­el 198, it’s an accu­rate repro­duc­tion of the Park Ward design.

Note
The most promi­nent exte­ri­or body change of the Phan­tom V was in 1963, with the tran­si­tion from sin­gle round head­lights to the dis­tinc­tive twin-head­lamp set­up, a sig­na­ture of lat­er Phan­tom V and Sil­ver Cloud mod­els.

In Decem­ber 1964, Bea­t­le John Lennon bought a new Mulliner Park Ward Phan­tom V fin­ished in Valen­tine Black and lat­er repaint­ed in the style of a Romany gyp­sy wag­on. It is undoubt­ed­ly the most well known Rolls-Royce Phan­tom V in the world.

Final­ly, here is a com­pre­hen­sive list of all Dinky Toys Rolls-Royce and Bent­ley minia­tures made by Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool:

• 30B Rolls Royce car 1935–1950
• 150 Rolls Royce Sil­ver Wraith 1959–1964
• 198 Rolls Royce Phan­tom V 1962–1969
• 127 Rolls Royce Sil­ver Cloud III 1964–1972
• 152 Rolls Royce Phan­tom V Lim­ou­sine 1965–1977
• 158 Rolls Royce Sil­ver Shad­ow 1967–1973
• 1001 Rolls Royce Phan­tom V Lim­ou­sine 1971–1977
• 124 Rolls Royce Phan­tom V Lim­ou­sine 1977–1979

• 36B Bent­ley (Two-seater  sports coupe with dri­ver and pas­sen­ger) 1937–1941
• 36B Bent­ley 1946–1950
• 194 Bent­ley S Series Coupe 1961–1967