The Colours of Luxury Vol. 1 Rolls-Royce and Bentley 1946-1980

The Colours of Luxury is the first ever book on Rolls-Royce and Bentley colour and trim design. It is also the first ever book on automobile colour and trim design per se and is therefore a truly genre-defining publication. It presents all the standard production paint colours and all trim colours for Rolls-Royce and Bentley between 1946-2002. But it is more than just a dry list for it also carefully explores and presents the stories behind the rich materials that went into these remarkable handmade cars. It will tell you about how Connolly made the leather upholstery for these cars; about the exquisite woodwork; the Wilton carpet; the lambswool rugs; the West of England cloth headlining. And the alternatives to leather such as the popularity of velour in these cars in the 1970s and the vinyl that trimmed car roofs that was known as Everflex.

Colour and trim for every model is discussed – from the post-War Bentley Mark 6 to the stately Phantom VI – and presented for when Rolls-Royce and Bentley were made side-by-side at the legendary factory at Crewe, Cheshire. It is the result of four years intense work and six years interest in this field with the input of many experts, above all no less than Rolls-Royce Motors’ former Chief Stylist Graham Hull and he has kindly written the foreword.

The book will be of considerable interest to those restoring their car or cars as well as aficionados and historians of both marques. Automotive history for so long now has been preoccupied with just engineering and styling concerns and therefore this book breaks completely new ground with very original research that has simply never been carried out before. The book looks in places where Automotive Historians do not normally venture.

The book features a wealth of unpublished pictures for the first time and has also gone to great lengths to present and profoundly understand a previously completely unstudied aspect of Rolls-Royce and Bentley marketing and that is their use of dealership colour and trim samples.

Due to the size and pioneering nature of the subject matter, it will be presented in two volumes available in 2024: volume 1 (1946-1980) and volume 2 (1980-2002) in preparation.

Dr. Oliver Bradbury, M.Litt., is a colour and trim historian – perhaps the world’s first – and this is his first book on Rolls-Royce and Bentley. Prior to this publication he has written many articles on colour and trim concerning Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin Lagonda, Daimler and Vanden Plas.