Background
Immediately after the second World War, Rolls Royce was, just like many other car constructors, in a very difficult spot from a financial perspective. The war years had led to rapidly declining sales and the brand was looking for solutions to survive. The answer was the Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn, with its factory-built body which it shared, together with the chassis, with the Bentley Mark VI until 1952 and from there on the Bentley R-Type until the end of production in 1955. Though some people would view these as dark times for the make, we can today safely assume that Rolls-Royce owes its survival to the model.
After the War in 1946, Rolls-Royce had moved its production from Derby to Crewe where they began building complete cars in-house. As such, the first new Bentley was the Mark VI, which was then followed by its sister car in 1949, sold under the Rolls-Royce brand name. Both cars were basically identical, but the Silver Dawn was only built for export until 1953. As such, most Silver Dawns were left-hand drive with the Standard Pressed Steel four-door salon bodywork. Only about 760 Silver Dawns were built and about 60 of those cars were bodied by different smaller coachbuilders. Left-hand drive vehicles were always delivered with a manual transmission and a column gear change, whereas right-hand drive examples featured a floor change. The gearbox though remained the same and had four gears, with an automatic option becoming available in late 1952.
A first notable upgrade came in 1951 when the six-cylinder in-line engine size was increased to 4 ½ litre from the previous 4.2 litre and received a full flow oil filter. Later cars also received high compression heads. All the engine iterations had overhead inlet and side exhaust valves.
Though the company was trying to cut costs, the cars sold for £4.700 when new, which was 12 times the price of a new English Ford.
Rarity of the Rolls-Royce make it a more desirable and expensive car to buy compared to the Bentley sister car. Generally, the cars are said to be reliable and comfortable drivers, also for long trips and require only basic and inexpensive maintenance.
