Pardon Me, Is That a Rolls-Royce?
A Car Purchase, Inspired by an Iconic TV Commercial for Mustard

By A.J. Baime - For the Wall Street Journal - Click Here for Article with Comments
Nov. 25, 2014  
 
Wayne Schooling, 70, president of the NorthAmerican Transportation Association from Lakewood, Calif., on his 1963½ Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III:

Back in the 1980s, I saw the Grey Poupon ads with the Rolls-Royces in them, and I thought, that has to be the coolest car there is. One of these days, I might have one.

In 2008, a friend called and said he had a Silver Cloud III for sale. He was asking just $8,000. I went to see the car. It needed restoration, and it had this ungodly blue-velour interior. I said, “I’ll take it, just the way it is.”

Most cars today lack character. They look like they were all designed at Ikea. This one? I had more fun driving it in the first hour than all other cars I’ve had put together. It turned more heads, got more thumbs up—people just love it. It’s the classiest car in the world, in my opinion. Elvis Presley drove a Silver Cloud. So did Sammy Davis Jr.

The restoration job wasn’t easy. It took two years to find a guy with the gumption to paint it. If you screw up the chrome, you can’t replace it. Rolls-Royce only built about 2,500 Silver Cloud IIIs.

By now, I’ve put close to $30,000 into the car, but it’s worth it. I keep a jar of Grey Poupon in the glove compartment, for the smart-asses.

Photos - Patrick T. Fallon for The Wall Street