 |
| THE REMAKE: A Turkish design house’s 2013 interpretation of the 1924/35 Rolls Royce Jonckheere Aerodynamic Coupe (below). If buyers step forward, they will built it. (Photo: UgurSahirDesign) |
IF the Turkish design company Ugur Sahir
can find a buyer for their interpretation of the
one-of-a-kind Rolls Royce Jonckheere Aerodynamic Coupe, this naughties version
of 1930s Art Deco may soon delight other road users again.
This after Jonckheere, who built the original body in the 1930s and
is still building buses and coach bodies in Belgium, recently commissioned
Turkish designer Ugur Sahin to recreate the original hand-built Rolls on
computer.
“We are currently negotiating with two different potential
investors for the project. Considering it will be quite an expensive project, we
expect it to take a while.
“Hopefully they will come around and we will be able to build this
vehicle and see it on the road.”
In the tradition of bespoke suppliers, Sahir did not specify how
much it will cost. For in these circles, the assumption is that if you have to
ask the price, you cannot afford it. Sahir did stress that the new design was
carefully put together with a very crucial thing in mind: ‘Respect’.
“We set out to design a car that reflects a complex character which
impresses its surroundings without having to depend on too complicated elements
and unnecessary additions.
“In some way, this certain quality might reflect its owner as
well.
 |
| THE ORIGINAL: The Raja's Round Door Rolls, restored to what it (probably) looked like in 1935 |
The history of the Jonckheere Aerodynamic Coupe is fascinating.
Leslie Mark Kendall, curator of the Petersen Automotive Museum in
Los Angeles that currently owns the Jonckheere, informed The Witness
the original car started out in 1925 as a Hooper convertible, built for Mrs.
Hugh Dillman from Detroit. The lady then did what ladies do and changed her
mind, saying she did not want the Rolls after all.
No problem, said Rolls, for the 1920s was a decade in which the
Rajas of India bought more Rolls Royces than anyone else, and Dillman’s coupe
was sold to the Raja of Nanpara, in Uttar Pradesh, India.
A few years later, he sent just a stripped, rolling chassis to the
Jonckheere brothers in Belgium with instructions to add the latest in
fashionable round doors, a sloping radiator grill, twin sun roofs and of course,
a vertical, go-faster spoiler to boot.
 |
| The first pimped-out Rolls Royce. That is not a wing, that is a vertical spoiler, an' oll. |
In the process, he became the first man to pimp out a Rolls.
While the round doors still look perfect, they also explain why
there is a saying “you can never be too rich or too thin”. The Peterson museum
tells how, immediately before World War II, the Jonckheere was observed in Bar
Harbour, Maine, being driven by a chauffeur who was so obese that he could not
get out of round doors to open the door for his employer.
 |
| The original 1930's round door that the Raja liked so much: the Talbot Lago. Note: You can never be too thin or too rich for this design. |
The car fell into disrepair during the war and was rediscovered in
New Jersey in the early 1950s in near-derelict condition.
It is not known who rescued the car from being scrapped, but East
Coast entrepreneur Max Obie eventually acquired the unusual Rolls-Royce and
refurbished it.
He claimed to have mixed 2,6 kg of gold dust into the new paint job
and started a legend that “the Round Door Rolls” was once owned by King Edward
VIII, later the Duke of Windsor. The tactics worked, for Obie pimped the Rolls
at a dollar a peek.
In 1991, a Japanese man bought the Jonckheere coupe for $1,5
million. The Petersen Museum in Los Angeles got it back to the U.S. in 2001 and
restored it from the ground up.
Wouter Mellisen of the Ultimate Car Page reports the
car had a six-cylinder, 7,66-litre OHV inline six engine and a four-speed manual
transmission geared to quietly hurl this artwork on wheels around at 161 km/h.
Kendall warns, however, that, like any other Phantom I, the Round
Door Rolls-Royce “requires a great deal of driver involvement when underway”.
“It is difficult to steer at slow speeds, requires double-clutching
when changing gears, and cannot be stopped easily in an emergency.
“While fashionably low, the lack of ground clearance virtually
assures that the extended rear deck will scrape the ground if a driver does not
approach curbs and speed bumps slowly enough and at the proper angle.”
Like any coupe today, rear headroom is limited, so that backseat
passengers have to slouch in order to avoid coming into contact with the
headliner.
 | |
| When the cockpit looks like this, who needs comfort? (All photos of the original courtesy of the Petersen Museum) |
But, adds Kendall: “driver comfort and passenger ergonomics are not
why the Round Door Rolls was constructed”.
Instead, “it was built to make a statement; to win awards at
European concours and to elicit admiring glances from pedestrians and other
motorists. It achieves this purpose so well that most people who notice the car
immediately stop walking to watch it go by.
“These pedestrians — and virtually every motorist who encounters
the vehicle on the road — inevitably look inside in an attempt to identify the
lucky owner.
“Such reactions substantiate a truth that Southern Californians
have come to terms with long ago: the cars we choose to drive speak volumes
about our personalities.
