Halloween motors – Ghosts, Spirits, Phantoms and a Twenty

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Perhaps it’s better to avoid Rolls-Royce Ghosts today. Or perhaps not. Their name oozes something that people are looking for an All Hallows' Eve. But the earliest of Rolls-Royces thanked its name to its ghostly silence and its silver paint, making its appearance like that of a ghost. The noble British motor manufacturer remained faithful to its occult origins after that, with its Phantoms and Spirits.

But scariest of the Rolls-Royces may have been the Thrupp & Maberly bodied 20hp Light Saloon used by the Abominable Doctor Phibes in the 1971 movie of the same name. This was a 1926 car in which the unfortunate villain, seeking revenge for the death of his wife Victoria, was being driven by the mysterious Vulnavia. Did the car, registered PX 3944 in the movie, survive?

And speaking about ghostly cars. Remember the Phantom Corsair? Built by Bohman & Schwartz for Rust Heinz, heir to the ketchup fortune, this creature not only looked truly gothic – it seemed to cast a traffic spell on some of the people involved with it. Heinz died in 1939 in a head-on car crash in a Buick after just having shown the Phantom Corsair in New York. His wife remarried Joseph C. DeWitt who died in a similar car crash on a Californian highway in 1951. Meanwhile, the Phantom Corsair had made it to the silver screen as ‘the Flying Wombat – the car that thinks for you’. Janet Gaynor, the movie star, who was photographed frequently with the car, died in 1984 due to the results of a car crash which had also killed her manager… Be careful out there chaps!

Words Jeroen Booij.

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