The Round Door Rolls-Royce did not emerge from a vacuum. It was the product of an extraordinary cultural moment — a brief window in the 1920s and 1930s when the ultra-wealthy treated motorcars the way Renaissance patrons treated oil paintings: as one-of-a-kind commissions, collaborations between artist and client, designed to astonish. That the car exists at all, and survives today, is a story braided through the golden age of coachbuilding, Belgium's overlooked automotive heritage, an American industrial fortune of staggering scale, the Riviera concours circuit, India's princely states, and the post-war cultural amnesia that nearly consigned it all to the scrapheap.

BUYING A MOTORCAR THE WAY YOU'D COMMISSION A PORTRAIT

Before the Second World War, purchasing a luxury automobile was a multi-stage affair closer to bespoke tailoring than retail shopping. A buyer first acquired a rolling chassis from the manufacturer — engine, gearbox, frame, axles, wheels, radiator, brakes — and then selected an independent coachbuilder to design and construct the body. Every pre-war Rolls-Royce left the factory this way. The customer sat with the coachbuilder's designers, reviewed watercolour renderings, approved a full-scale wooden maquette, and waited months while craftsmen shaped aluminium panels over hand-carved ash frames. The bodywork often cost more than the chassis itself. A Duesenberg Model J rolling chassis sold for around $8,500 in the late 1920s; the finished body could double or triple that figure.

Hundreds of coachbuilding firms operated across Europe and North America in this era. In Britain, Barker & Co. — founded in 1710 under Queen Anne — was Rolls-Royce's preferred supplier. Hooper & Co., holder of a Royal Warrant since 1830, built the first royal motor car for King Edward VII. H.J. Mulliner catered to Mayfair aristocrats. Gurney Nutting, Park Ward, and Windovers each brought distinct aesthetic signatures to Rolls-Royce and Bentley chassis.

France, however, was the undisputed capital of automotive style. Figoni et Falaschi created the legendary Talbot-Lago T150C SS teardrop coupé — a shape many regard as the most beautiful ever applied to a motorcar. Jacques Saoutchik, a Ukrainian-born cabinetmaker who founded his Paris atelier in 1906, produced flamboyant Art Deco confections so ornate he became the Viollet-le-Duc of coachwork. Letourneur et Marchand, Chapron, Kellner, and Franay rounded out a constellation of Parisian carrossiers whose work was exhibited at the Salon de l'Automobile like paintings at the Louvre. In Germany, Erdmann & Rossi of Berlin dressed chassis for European royalty and film stars. In Italy, a young Battista Farina opened his Turin workshop in 1930, laying the foundation for Pininfarina's century of influence.

This world died in stages. Monocoque construction had appeared as early as the Lancia Lambda in 1923, but the decisive blow came after 1945. Unibody engineering — where body and chassis form a single integrated structure — made separate-chassis coachbuilding physically impossible. The war itself scattered the industry: Hooper turned to aircraft fuselage sections, Erdmann & Rossi's Berlin factory was bombed, and many firms simply never reopened. Post-war taxation eroded aristocratic fortunes. Mass production made steel body dies economical — but only at volumes no bespoke house could match. Saoutchik closed in 1955. Hooper built its last body in 1959. When Rolls-Royce introduced the unibody Silver Shadow in 1965, the separate chassis was essentially finished.

BELGIUM'S UNLIKELY AUTOMOTIVE POWERHOUSE

That the Round Door body was built in Belgium surprises many, but it shouldn't. Before the First World War, Belgium counted nearly 200 car manufacturers and ranked among the world's leading automotive nations, with three-quarters of production exported. Minerva of Antwerp, with its whisper-quiet Knight sleeve-valve engines and a clientele that included the kings of Belgium, Sweden, and Norway, was often compared directly to Rolls-Royce. Impéria of Nessonvaux built a rooftop test track atop its factory in 1928 — one of only three ever constructed worldwide, alongside Fiat's Lingotto in Turin. Camille Jenatzy, a Belgian, became the first person to exceed 100 km/h in 1899. The Brussels Auto Salon, first held in 1902, was one of the world's oldest motor shows.

Belgian coachbuilders matched this ambition. Van den Plas, founded in Brussels in 1870, employed around 400 workers producing over 300 bodies a year by 1908; its British branch built more than 700 Bentley bodies and eventually became a marque in its own right. D'Ieteren, established in 1805 — older than the Belgian state itself — built approximately 6,000 coachworks on over 100 different chassis brands. Vesters & Neirinck of Brussels produced some of the most elegant Derby Bentley coachwork of the late 1930s.

Jonckheere stood apart. Founded in 1881 by Henri Jonckheere in Beveren, near Roeselare in West Flanders, the firm began with horse-drawn carriages, transitioned to automobile coachwork in 1902, and by the 1920s was building primarily bus and coach bodies — an unusual background for a luxury carrossier. The Round Door Phantom I, completed around 1934–1935, was its masterwork and a dramatic outlier in its catalogue. The design drew unmistakable inspiration from French carrossiers like Saoutchik and Figoni — unsurprising given Belgium's position at the crossroads of French, German, and British automotive traditions. A fire destroyed Jonckheere's records, so who commissioned the body and who designed it remain unknown. The firm survives today as VDL Jonckheere, still building coaches.

THE PHANTOM I AND ITS MAGNIFICENT RIVALS

The car beneath Jonckheere's artistry was itself a landmark. The Rolls-Royce New Phantom — the name "Phantom I" came later, applied retroactively — debuted on 2 May 1925, replacing the Silver Ghost after a remarkable 20-year production run. A total of 3,512 were built: 2,269 at Derby and 1,243 at the Springfield, Massachusetts factory. The new overhead-valve 7,668 cc inline-six produced roughly 100 to 108 brake horsepower — a significant leap over the Ghost's ageing side-valve design — and featured servo-assisted four-wheel brakes licensed from rival Hispano-Suiza, a detail that must have stung Rolls-Royce's pride somewhat.

The Phantom I entered a fiercely competitive field. The Hispano-Suiza H6, sensation of the 1919 Paris Salon, offered an overhead-cam aluminium engine and handling that made it the more modern driver's car. The Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8A, with its pioneering straight-eight, was the favoured conveyance of Rudolph Valentino and Clara Bow. The Duesenberg Model J, arriving in 1928, dwarfed them all: its twin-cam straight-eight produced around 265 horsepower — more than double the Phantom's output — and propelled the car beyond 116 mph. And the Bugatti Royale Type 41, with its monstrous 12.7-litre engine, was the most extreme luxury car ever conceived, though only six were built. Against this company, the Phantom I sold on refinement and reputation rather than raw specification, and Rolls-Royce's famous refusal to publish power figures — describing output only as "sufficient" — became an elegant dodge.

THE DODGE FORTUNE THAT STARTED IT ALL

The Phantom I that Jonckheere would transform was originally ordered with a Hooper cabriolet body by Mrs. Hugh Dillman of Detroit — the married name of Anna Thomson Dodge, widow of Horace Dodge and one of the wealthiest women on Earth. The Dodge brothers' fortune had improbable origins: a $10,000 investment in Ford Motor Company stock in 1903, accepted as partial payment for supplying chassis components to Henry Ford, eventually returned approximately $32 million through dividends and the 1919 buyout. After both brothers died in 1920 — John of pneumonia in January, Horace of complications in December, both weakened by the Spanish Flu — their widows sold the Dodge Brothers Motor Company to Dillon, Read & Co. in April 1925 for $146 million in cash, the largest commercial transaction in American history at the time. Anna's share was roughly $73 million. Combined with tax-free municipal bond income of around $1.5 million a year, she earned an estimated $40,000 per day.

Her spending reflected it. Rose Terrace, her Grosse Pointe Farms mansion rebuilt in Louis XVI style by architect Horace Trumbauer, comprised 75 rooms across 42,000 square feet and cost $7 million to furnish — during the Depression. Joseph Duveen, the legendary art dealer, helped her fill it with chairs that had belonged to Marie Antoinette. Her yacht, the SS Delphine, stretched 258 feet and required a crew of up to 52; during the war it served as Admiral Ernest King's flagship. Horace had purchased her a five-strand Catherine the Great pearl necklace from Cartier for $825,000 — a sum approaching $70 million in today's currency.

Yet Anna apparently never took delivery of the Phantom I. The car remained in England and was resold, still virtually new, to the Raja of Nanpara — one of roughly 900 Rolls-Royces that Indian royalty purchased before independence. India was an extraordinary market for the marque: approximately one in five Rolls-Royces went to Indian clients in the interwar years. The Maharaja of Patiala owned 44 at his death in 1938. The Maharaja of Mysore ordered in such bulk that the company reportedly coined an internal phrase for large orders based on his name. Rulers commissioned throne cars with gold-silk upholstery, hunting cars with mounted shotguns, and purdah cars with tinted glass for royal women travelling in seclusion. The Nizam of Hyderabad — reputedly the world's richest man in the 1930s — used a 185-carat diamond as a paperweight but reportedly drove a battered old Buick for daily errands.

CONCOURS QUEENS AND RIVIERA GLORY

After leaving India and passing through several owners, the Phantom I arrived in Belgium around the early 1930s and received its Jonckheere body. Its debut came at the Cannes Concours d'Élégance, where it won the Prix d'Honneur — the top award. Sources conflict on whether this occurred in 1934 or 1936; Jonckheere's destroyed records make verification impossible.

The 1930s concours circuit was the haute couture runway of the automotive world. Originating in seventeenth-century Parisian carriage parades, these events — staged at Cannes, Monte Carlo, Biarritz, Deauville, the Bois de Boulogne, Villa d'Este — judged not merely the car but the total ensemble of machine, owner, and fashion. The three Cs — constructor, carrossier, and couturier — collaborated on each entry. Josephine Baker appeared at one 1931 event with a coachbuilt Delage convertible. Coachbuilders treated concours victories as their most powerful marketing, and the social elite treated attendance as obligation.

FROM CONCOURS QUEEN TO CARNIVAL SIDESHOW

The war ended this world utterly. Civilian car production halted. Luxury marques — Hispano-Suiza, Delahaye, Horch, Voisin — vanished. In Britain, post-war petrol rationing limited driving to roughly 200 miles per month; sweet rationing lasted until 1954. Across Europe, the giant, thirsty masterpieces of the 1930s became relics of an embarrassing past, too expensive to run, too ostentatious for the age of austerity.

The Round Door Rolls-Royce survived wartime scrap drives but landed in a New Jersey scrapyard in the early 1950s, near-derelict. An entrepreneur named Max Obie rescued it, painted it with six pounds of gold-flake lacquer, fabricated a story connecting it to King Edward VIII, and toured it to shopping centres and fairgrounds as "The $100,000 Royal Rolls-Royce," charging one dollar admission — a concours queen reduced to a carnival sideshow. It was not alone in its humiliation: across Europe, countless prewar treasures mouldered under corrugated shelters or sat forgotten in garages. Jean Bugatti's personal Type 57SC Atlantic, known as "La Voiture Noire," vanished entirely during the German invasion of France and has never been found. A Bugatti Type 57S Atalante sat in a Newcastle garage for 50 years, discovered only after its owner's death in 2009.

The revival came slowly. The Pebble Beach Concours d'Élégance, founded in 1950, was the first major North American event to celebrate surviving prewar masterpieces. Early collectors bought cars from scrapyards when others considered them worthless. By the late 1980s, the classic car market had exploded — the Round Door Rolls sold at auction in 1991 for $1.5 million to a Japanese collector. It sat unseen for nearly a decade before the Petersen Automotive Museum acquired it in 2001, commissioned a ground-up restoration, and debuted it at Pebble Beach in 2005, where it won the Lucius Beebe Trophy for finest Rolls-Royce. The concours queen had, after seven decades, returned to the stage that created it — battered, reborn, and finally recognised for what Jonckheere's anonymous designer always intended it to be.