October 1918: Lt. Col. T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) rides through Damascus, Syria, in his Rolls-Royce tender Blue Mist. (Courtesy of The Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust)

Trench warfare and intractable mud ultimately made the Royal Naval Air Service cars unsuited for combat on the Western Front, but they were to see other fields of action

Our Rolls-Royce armored car is one of the top exhibits we have,” says David Willey, curator of the Tank Museum in Dorset, England. “It’s one of those vehicles that still has cachet. There’s an aura about it, and all of us here have a certain pride that it’s part of the collection.”

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The car in question was constructed on the chassis of a 1920 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, regarded in contemporary motoring circles as “the best car in the world.” Built between 1906 and 1926, the elegant Ghost was certainly never intended for military service. It edged into that role after gaining a reputation for toughness and durability. The fledgling enterprise of automaker F. Henry Royce and London-based car dealer Charles Rolls got a tremendous boost from the bulletproof Ghost.

The duo first unveiled the Ghost in Britain at the 1906 Olympia car show, in four-cylinder and six-cylinder versions. It was so successful (7,824 were sold) that the company built nothing else until the launch of the Phantom I in 1925. The company’s short-lived Springfield, Mass., factory built an additional 1,701 Ghosts.

This was the era of the bespoke luxury car, thus few Silver Ghosts were exactly alike. Coachbuilders vied to equip them with opulent bodies, suitable for everything from chauffeuring madam to the London opera to pigsticking (boar hunting) in India. Silver Ghosts were especially popular with Indian maharajas. The Richard J. Solove collection, recently sold for charity, included a 1910 Ghost roadster purpose-built for Charles Rolls to retrieve his hot-air balloons; a 1911 model with a canopy to protect the Maharajah of Mysore from the punishing Indian sun; and a 1912 limousine whose rear compartment contains an alcohol stove and tea service for four.

The six-cylinder Ghost, known as the 40/50 for its horsepower rating, was called up for military service early in World War I. The initial impetus was a 1914 report that the Belgians had armored a Minerva touring sedan for raids on the German army.

Britain’s Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) raised the first Rolls-equipped armored car squadron and had vehicles at the front within weeks of the August 1914 outbreak of war. The Rolls-Royce proved the most effective vehicle in the field, and by September all available Silver Ghost chassis had been requisitioned. Civilian production of the car essentially stopped, although in 1915 the company built one very special limousine (with elephant ivory door handles, among other amenities) at the personal request of King George V as a favor for American explosives manufacturer Pierre du Pont. A few private citizens donated their Ghosts for military use, though these were not necessarily armored. One prominent donor was Hugh Grosvenor, second Duke of Westminster, whose 1914 Ghost saw considerable action, first in France and then in Egypt.

Soon, however, the Derby factory was providing bare chassis to Eastern Armored Car (EAC) specifications, which included stiffer leaf springs. As many as 120 of these vehicles saw service during the war. The fearsome-looking armored bodywork was topped with a revolving turret mounted with a .303-inch Vickers water-cooled machine gun. Various running updates made them more effective in combat. Versions built after 1920 were fitted with Michelin double-steel rear wheels.

Thus armored, the cars were extremely heavy, and though the Rolls-Royce engine was quiet, the military models were thirsty and ungainly to handle. They tended to overheat when the protective radiator shutters were closed. But they performed well under fire. “As a fighting vehicle, the design was adequate, although the traditional comfort left much to be desired,” wrote Frank Canvin, who manned a Ghost in the Middle East.

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