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6th February 2000

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That mysterious Rolls-Royce

By Roger Thiedeman

In The Sunday Times of January 16, the popular series "Down Memory Lane" by veteran writer Roshan Peiris featured the story of Dr. Gamani Corea. Among his many youthful reminiscences, Dr. Corea recounted how, accompanied by his small circle of friends he would often go on "long, stimulating drives" in his father's 1927 (sic) Rolls-Royce. Actually, that car is of 1925 vintage and, unlike many other Rolls-Royces that came to Ceylon, it survives in Sri Lanka to this day.

The Rools-Royce in the 'mystery' photoNearly 20 years ago, I embarked on a project to document and identify every single Rolls-Royce motor car imported to Ceylon for either private or official use. That was no easy feat. Not only because a high proportion of the cars had succumbed to the nadars of Panchikawatte, or had been bought by foreign collectors and shipped overseas. But mainly because my home is a long way from Sri Lanka, and the postal system was my sole avenue for research. Back then, faxing of letters was a limited option, while E-mail and the Internet were still unheard of in private usage.

When I commenced my research project, friends in Sri Lanka would kindly extract information from the old motor vehicle registers, dating back to the dawn of motoring in Ceylon, kept at the Registrar of Motor Vehicles (R.M.V.) office in Narahenpita. That ended when some departmental bureaucrat (booru-crat?), in his/her wisdom, decided to send those ancient, precious registers to the Paper Mills Corporation for pulping. Without even bothering to transfer the vital records onto microfilm first! So, in one fell swoop a large chunk of Sri Lanka's motoring history and heritage disappeared for ever.

Anyway, I persevered. I kept writing letters, dozens and dozens of them - to owners, former owners, newspaper editors, government departments, private corporations, etc. - requesting, even pleading, for information or photographs of Rolls-Royce cars in Ceylon. The vast majority of my pleas went unanswered. But thanks to the helpful people who replied, my database began growing. More importantly, as my knowledge also grew, I was able to check and cross-check the accuracy of my information.

By the late 1980s, I was 99% sure that I had managed to account for each and every Rolls-Royce hitherto landed in Ceylon, whether still extant or not. In fact, I began to feel quite smug at my efforts. But that smugness evaporated the day another photograph arrived in the post.

The print came from the archives of a large newspaper group in Colombo. It depicted a vintage Rolls-Royce 20 h.p. (horsepower) saloon, seemingly photographed in Ceylon several years ago. But the car in the picture did not match up to any of the Rolls-Royces on my list. I had no idea what its chassis number was, or to whom it might have belonged. In the photo a front number plate was visible (which might have aided identification), but the single-letter prefix and numbers were not legible. Confronted by this 'mystery' Rolls, I was both excited and frustrated. Not unlike, say, a bibliophile who has just bought a complete set of Dickens first editions, only to hear that the manuscript of another unpublished book lies in a dusty attic somewhere in England!

Subsequent enquiries directed at some of the vintage car 'cognoscenti' in Sri Lanka failed to shed any light on the mystery car in my photo. And a mystery it remained, until I returned to Sri Lanka on a holiday in December 1991. To this day, I congratulate myself for taking with me a small album of photos I had collected of Rolls-Royce cars in Ceylon - including the unidentified car in question. During my vacation, I visited an old friend and vintage car expert Naomal Kirtisinghe (now living in Canada) at his home in Moratuwa. When he saw the uncaptioned photo of the car, Naomal casually remarked, "That's the Rolls at Ebert Silva's garage in Dehiwela." I nearly fell off the sofa in shock. Returning my slack jaw, protruding eyeballs and elevated eyebrows to a semblance of their usual positions, I barely managed to gibber: "Ebert Silva? Rolls? I didn't know Ebert Silva had a Rolls?" This was truly a case of 'serendipity in Serendib'!

Less than an hour later, I was clambering over bits of mechanical flotsam and jetsam to reach a Rolls-Royce 20 h.p. in a corner of one of the multi-car garages that houses Mr. Silva's large and interesting collection of automobiles. The Rolls-Royce was just a bare chassis (the body having been removed at some stage), so it was easy for me to locate the chassis plate with the all-important chassis number: GNK25. Armed with this vital piece of information, I could trace the car's history from my extensive library of reference material back home in Australia. And there was a bonus. That front number plate, illegible in the photo, was badly discoloured, but revealed unmistakably that the registration number of the Rolls-Royce was C-9042. Now I knew how Sir Galahad felt when he found the Holy Grail; or Indiana Jones, upon discovering the Lost Ark or the Temple of Doom!

The 20 h.p. chassis GNK25 was built at the Derby works of Rolls-Royce Limited in early 1925. It was fitted with a saloon body by the Scottish coachbuilding firm of A.C. Penman Ltd., and bought new by Sir William Younger of Auchers Castle, Moffat, Scotland. The car was supplied to its titled owner by the Clyde Auto Company dealership. For reasons unknown, the Rolls remained in Sir William's possession only until July 1925, when it was sold to A. Miranda of London.

Official Rolls-Royce documents reveal that the 20 h.p. saloon was next bought in September 1927 by Dr. C.V.S. Corea, whose address is shown as Kensington Square, London S.W. (the purchase date of 1927 explains Dr. Gamani Corea's confusion over the vintage of the car). That is where the Rolls-Royce ownership records for this car stop, but not for me. Through that evergreen 'guru' of Sri Lankan motoring, Mr. Edward 'Bugs' Mason, I was fortunate to learn how this car was bought by a Ceylonese and eventually came to the island.

According to Mr. Mason: "Dr. C.V.S. 'Sid' Corea was married to Mr. (later Sir) John Kotelawala's sister Freda. Dr. Sid Corea's son by Sir John's sister is Dr. Gamani Corea. While Dr. Sid Corea and Mr. Kotelawala were in England in 1927, the latter decided to purchase a 20 h.p. Sunbeam. Sid Corea, not to be outdone, purchased the Rolls. Later, after taking the car to Ceylon (where it was registered C-9042), Dr. Corea sold the Rolls-Royce to Corbett Jayewardene, brother of the late J.R. Jayewardene."

Edward Mason continues: "I have travelled many miles with Corbett in the Rolls. To whom Corbett sold the car I do not know. Of the two cars the two brothers-in-law brought to Ceylon, it was Sir John's Sunbeam that took my fancy. It was a 6-cylinder 'Speed' model built by Sunbeam before the concern was taken over by the Rootes Group."

As for how he came to acquire the old Rolls-Royce, Ebert Silva could only add that he bought it in disused condition from a family in a remote town "down south" in the early 1980s. He hastens to point out that the saloon body has not been scrapped, but dismantled and stored elsewhere. It is his hope that the Rolls-Royce will be restored to running order some day, and reunited with its original Scottish-built body.

That will be a fitting fate for a Rolls-Royce that has been owned by some famous families of Sri Lanka, not least Mr.Silva whose late father was a pioneer of motorised public transport in this country.

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