In this crazy times, people tend to forget that cars are not just about economic value but about the stories you live with them. Lovely to see the rolls taken care of, great stuff Harry.
I agree, it doesn't matter whether the car is worth it. The only point that matters is whether you're prepared to spend the money on it. There is more emotion with cars than 'non-car people' might think.
Some guy used a RR Corniche (coupe version of Silver Shadow) as a Paris-Dakar rally car. I think he used a LandCruiser chassis frame + suspention +axels under it for the 4x4. robbreport.com/motors/cars/paris-dakar-rally-rolls-royce-2827674/
after what has been done to her, she deserves all the repairs she needs! so my wife won't be embarrassed when I say "let's take the Rolls"...I love it.
The Artic Rolls clearly brings so much enjoyment for the family as an “occasional” so it’s great to see you’re putting something back into it. I bought an immaculate last of the steel bodied XJ8’s a few years as a daily for my wife to waft from Oxton to West Kirby and back for work in a bit of luxury and style, it serves as our occasion car too, so no expense spared with meticulous maintenance at Bob Bate in Birkenhead.
Harry, remember what Sir Henry Royce said ' the quality remains after the price is forgotten ' !.It was the Arctic Circle video , one of the most enjoyable I have seen on RU-vid and often revisited , that introduced me to your most enjoyable channel .This old girl having achieved the trip of a lifetime , deserves all this overdue care and attention after half a century ! .
Harry should award each of these garages working on restoring his various cars a Harry Metcalfe coat of arms, thus recognising their continued commitment to excellent work...just a thought!
The Artic Rolls got me and many others hooked on the channel, great to see it being given some love in the way that most of us could either do or afford 👍
Coincidentally, I’ve just (10 days ago) put my own precious ‘89 Silver Spur in for a full bodywork/repaint to original spec. 356,000 kilometres on it, used to be a daily driver. My mechanic is stripping it as we speak. I’ll be watching the progress of Harry’s car with bated breath, because I can imagine that it’s going to be magnificent when it emerges!
I love the idea of having different “levels” of restoration happening simultaneously. Makes it seem achievable on some level regardless of economic standing... within reason, of course! Thanks for sharing these insights and experiences with us!
As a result of your arctic roller video, my wife and I took the plunge and flew from Australia via China to Norway. Picked up a Skoda Octavia 4wd wagon and drove nearly 3000km around and up to Tromso above the Arctic circle. What an amazing experience. And we survived. Thanks Harry for the inspiration. We got it in just before Covid🤪.
Looked pretty rough in places to me too - that’s going to need a few tubs of P38 to get straight again. It’s not the work of Pete C at Cortina City, now that’s welding.
The opening scene... I thought it was a budget wedding video.... a very low budget wedding video!! Love it! Always like resto vids. Keep ‘em coming Mr M
Obviously our Harry has a bit of spare cash available so the other restorations we've seen on this channel seem to be almost no holds barred 'money no object' efforts. The Rolls Royce on the other hand is being done on the kind of budget many of us lesser mortals have to work with on our own humble classics. To my way of thinking that 'real world' element potentially makes this job the most interesting of all the restorations and I for one can't wait to see what can be achieved on not very much money.
This car and its trip to Norway was how I found out about the channel (some engineering forum post about procrastination mentioned watching a guy take a Rolls Royce to the arctic circle in winter and I had to find out), so it is great to see it in the spotlight again!
Love to see the cars from my childhood being cared for by you. I grew up knowing this model represented success and it holds a place of wonderment and awe even to this day when I see one. So glad you’ve chosen to keep her, she’s a true classic. Thanks Harry, I just love your videos.🇨🇦👍
Harry, I remember when you added this to the fleet, cannot believe it was Oct 2017. I’m not into tweeting and what not, so really happy to see the old girl getting some TLC as it’s my favourite from your collection.
Well welcome to another Harry's Garage video and this video was long overdue. After its monumental achievements it's great to see Mr M giving some well deserved love and TLC back to the Roller.
Im so glad Harry kept this car and now is giving it a makeover, as far as being a Pub Rolls, it will have an advantage over all the small cars at the pub, they will just bounce off it
Don't forget it was also a hard working wedding car as many of them were when they aged and a lot of couples have fond memories of that car, you want to preserve that heritage i think, don't make it factory fresh or you loose that history too!
Love these rebuilds, great giving the bargain bucket lady a new frock and some lippy, its what she needed and deserves. Still alot of flash for not alot of cash... keep it up, great work.
Wonderful to see this. That Rolls is such a characterful thing, all the more because of what it endured so very nice to see it getting this attention. And it just is such a good looking car already, imagine what it will look like in the end.
It must be lovely to be so competent in something that you have that much confidence you can put it right :) this just looks utterly terrifying to me but lovely to see it being done, thanks for posting.
Cheers Harry for changing your mind about another restoration video ,also well done to Us viewers for making him change his mind seems we have some sort attachment to Harry's cars .... :)
I'm sure that I produced far more spares for the XJC than the actual number of cars that were built! There were nose cones/air intakes that were a separate assembly so dispatched unattached to a main skin panel. Primarily for rust repairs.
Gosh she's in a bit of a state Harry, £4k for that back in 2017, you got done, I picked up a dark blue with black roof one in 1999 for $5k aus, 1 owner full service history, had been off the road for 3yrs, cost me another $2.5k to get back on the road mainly tyres, drove it as a weekend family cruiser for about 6yrs, sold it on for $15k, that was the mistake, Rj in Oz
Lovely. It's a shame it had gone to seed like that. I suppose all that filler added a few kilos. It will be a great daily driver when finished. Thanks for sharing another adventure 😀.
Can’t wait for your annual round up of costs around the garage - if you’re going to do it? Looking forward to seeing the finished vehicles at the end of these projects.
Older cars you aren’t scared of scratching, always provide better memories ! Can park them in a pub carpark and not worry about them ! Plus you will never lose the Roller in a carpark, where all the cars look the same.
I admired the arctic video in a £4k Rolls Royce, but on seeing how scabby it is, by the time you have spent another £5k on a patch-up, it still will be a bit rough, and it shows why you may as well spend more money and get a good one in the first place. However, I understand the desire to keep it going more for sentiment than economics! Really enjoy all the video's, and find Harry an extremely interesting and entertaining commentator. The BBC needs someone like this, but I suspect Harry would probably prefer to maintain his position as a free agent!
A food comment based on Harry's witty use of the pun 'Arctic Rolls' for this Rolls Royce which visited the Arctic: I remember (as a kid) having my first taste of Arctic roll (the dessert), and being hugely disappointed. For anyone unfamiliar with this so-called teatime treat, it's a solid cylinder of vanilla ice cream wrapped in a jacket of plain sponge cake, with a layer of raspberry jam (or sauce) between the two. It's then cut like a loaf of bread and served in slices. It has potential, but only if you make it yourself and go mad with the sponge and the jam. The commercial product is obviously engineered by food technicians to be 'extruded' by a machine. Like me, it's utterly without charm. The version I had was at a friend's birthday party. Rather than the traditional jelly and ice cream frenzy (yay!), my friend's mum had bought something ghastly from the corner shop's freezer. Ooh, it was 'orrible. Crunchy, crystallised, watery ice cream; the merest smear of fake raspberry-red goo, and a sponge wrapping as thin and tasty as blotting paper. Truly unforgettable, and for all the wrong reasons. Assuming you don't want to go to the trouble of actually baking anything - and a Norwegian/Siberian omelette [a.k.a. Baked Alaska, and numerous other names] with genuine meringue is a real pain to do properly - my favourite hot-cold dessert is super simple: real vanilla ice cream with homemade hot chocolate sauce. It works because there's an element of timing involved in the eating - every spoonful is a perfect blend of j-j-u-u-ust warmed-up melting ice cream and j-j-u-u-ust cooled-down and coagulating choccy sauce. It's so good it's probably illegal. Also, the brown and white colour combination brings to mind Harry's Rolls Royce dissolving under a rising tide of rusty brown doom... 🤭
the Arctic trip was the first video of Harry's i saw , then watched the lotus trip to the Alps? .. so glad it's not yet another concourse resto , a spruce up is perfect as i think there will be another few big trips in her ( and i don't mean piling everyone in to go to the local pub )
luved the artic story with this car...super entertaining. do they salt the roads in the UK? that is typical midwestern US-level of rustout...where the roads are most assuredly salted, heavily.
