Katie Forrest-Towers grew up with this 1912 Rolls-Royce
WOMAN & MACHINE
I WAS ABOUT four years old when dad acquired ‘Nellie’, so-called because she was large and grey, like the elephant in the song. She played a huge part in my childhood and, now that I’m her custodian, I use her a lot, too. She’s driven everywhere – I don’t even own a trailer.
Nellie is a 1912 Silver Ghost, commissioned with a Barker body by Rolls-Royce for its Bombay agent in India. She’s the only Ghost that survives with its original Barker phaeton torpedo body rather than a replica, and was shipped out to India early in 1913 and used as a demonstrator there for about six months, before she was sold to the Maharajah of Nabha.
Being an export model, she has a bigger radiator, large-diameter wheels and a tropical-spec carburettor, plus two horns: a loud one and a much quieter bulb horn that we call the ‘cow horn’, since cows are sacred animals in India. Other extras are the hanging-chain mudflaps you can see behind the front wheels, intended to deflect debris from the poorly surfaced roads; apparently this would have included the hooves shed by oxen!
Dad had been searching for a really good, original Ghost for several years in the 1980s when he heard of this one being sold through a dealer in, I think, Holland. The then-current Maharini, the widow of the Maharaja’s son, was disposing of a number of their cars and the Ghost had been parked-up for most of the last 60 years. She was requisitioned by the Allies during World War Two, repainted in battleship grey and fitted with Bedford lorry wheels and tyres, but was otherwise largely untouched.
Dad was determined to restore her in time for the 1993 20-Ghost Club Alpine Trial and refinished her in the correct Pearl Grey colour with green leather. She was a huge part of my childhood, being used for family holidays – I have a picture of her fording a river on Exmoor with about eight of us plus two Red Setter dogs crammed inside – as well as lots of tours and rallies abroad. When I wa
