My wife discovered this super rare 2-door Pininfarina-designed car in 2015 having been stored in an underground chamber (by a person of ill-repute..) for over 15 years, along with nearly 100 other prestige and sports cars, but that’s another story! It was bought and then re-commissioned by renowned marque and model specialist Chris Moroney and became a rolling restoration from then on. It was in remarkably good condition, with pleasingly faded paintwork and completely original interior, with an extensive history file. In 2018 we toured France and Italy in it, doing what it was
designed for, trans-continental touring in comfort and at some speed. By 2020 we decided to restore the bodywork with a bare metal re-paint in its original Cobalt Blue and have the very special nuella hide leather and wood restored at the same time. It is now possibly one of the best examples and 1 of only 530 ever made, and 1 of only 173 made with RHD.
Since then we have continued to use it as much as possible, with further trips abroad to Le Mans and a very memorable journey ‘home’ to Perthshire in Scotland where it was sold new by the long established RR distributor Grassicks of Perth. In the town of Crieff we met, and enjoyed many anecdotes and stories from Colin Grassick
(retired!) who was dealer principal back when it was sold, and who went to Sicily in 1975 to the official launch of the Camargue. It is worth mentioning that he sat next to Sergio Pininfarina himself at the launch dinner there and still has the invitation card from the event personally signed by Mr Pininfarina. It was no ordinary launch, as this was the most expensive production car in the world at that time costing over £30,000 in 1975 and eagerly ordered by royalty, oil barons and celebrities.
Each car took 6 months to build by hand at Mulliner Park Ward coachbuilders in North London and the RR factory at Crewe, based on a monocoque platform and using the venerable 6.75l V8 but with special Solex 4-barrel carburettor for extra performance. It was the world’s first car with split-level air conditioning and featured many advanced systems such as self-levelling hydro-pneumatic suspension and fibre-optic wing-top marker lights.