The Silver Cloud series of Rolls Royces were built from 1955 to 1966 and were the primary vehicle available from the company during that time. Following World War 2, Rolls Royce started in-house construction of bodies, as all all pre-war examples had bodies built by various outside coachbuilders. The design was a fresh approach updating and moving on from the pre-war era, but still maintained a body on frame construction to allow for custom coachwork, though the majority were sold with factory bodies. The Silver Cloud I continued to use the inline 6 cylinder engine of its predecessor, but was now fitted as standard with a 4 speed GM-sourced Hydramatic automatic transmission. When the Silver Cloud II was introduced in 1959, however, the 6 cylinder engine was replaced with a Rolls-Royce designed wet liner 6.2 liter V8. Not quite as smooth and quiet as the inline 6 it replaced, it did, however, provide more power and better performance. The body of the Silver Cloud II was not changed significantly from the Silver Cloud I aside from minor details. The design had more significant changes with the introduction of the Silver Cloud III, featuring redesigned interior, upgraded engine and a reduction in overall weight and more exterior changes, the most obvious of which was a change to four headlamps. The car was eventually discontinued in 1966 when it was replaced by the Silver Shadow series. Our Rolls Royce is a very well preserved largely original car. It has a fair amount of patina, but no real flaws that would require any extensive restoration work. We purchased the car locally from the previous owner who had also bought it from a collection in Oregon. There was some deferred mechanical maintenance that needed addressing, but overall the car still ran and drove very well. The previous owner had recently rebuilt the brakes, serviced the car, and sorted some of the existing faults, but we had to replace the exhaust, rebuild the rear shock absorbers, sort out some leaks in the power steering and rebuild and recharge the factory air conditioning system. In general, however it was a pretty sound car and we’ve made a few longer distance trips in it. To our surprise, it took second place in its class at the Portland All British Field Meet in 2021 with several other nice examples on the field. These cars are very comfortable to drive in most conditions, though being a big, heavy car, they can hardly be called sporting. The steering is light with the power assist and overall the brakes are good, but the mechanical servo takes some getting used to as it relies on the motion of the car to determine the amount of assistance, making the brakes much less responsive when moving at very low speeds.