Wedding Transport

6589 days. Give or take. That’s the length of time it will have taken us to get married when “The Missus” danders into Dublin City Hall on the 7th of October. To mark the occasion many options were selected and then rapidly deselected. To say I am well acquainted with every large country house and hotel within a 150 km radius of our home is an understatement. Preparations have also contributed to the drought of articles emanating from Addicted to Cars Towers in recent months. I can now report that a city centre wedding was finally chosen and any envelope of any colour (brown is probably best) are still being accepted at ATC, PO Box 1, Dublin 2.

I’m delighted with our decision, I love that there will be no travel and that we can walk from the ceremony to the reception (with a brief stop for refreshment along the way). You know where this is going don’t you? There is one downside. I don’t get to spend (for once entirely justifiable) hours on the internet looking at old cars. “It’s for the wedding, I have to check out all the options surely?”. I don’t get to visit various nondescript warehouses and garages and peer under the bonnet at elderly V8s and even more venerable straight sixes. Life is sooo unfair.

That said I’m pretty sure I know which car I would have picked. Recently I’ve seen some relatively modern cars (less than 20 years old) that are faux vintage. I’m sure they’re reliable but they’re certainly not my cup of tea. A nice option might be to drive ourselves in a nice open top two seater. That said, this is one day I’d be more than happy to be driven. Maybe we could even have a glass divider between driver and passengers thrown in for good measure.

The car for me is unquestionably the Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. Just not a series III, the single round headlamps of earlier models are little pearls of perfection. Seeing as speed will not be important maybe I’ll plump for a series one with it’s smooth but underpowered straight 6. Don’t want to spill the booze over the lambswool carpets.

There is a lot of nonsense talked about how previous generations had more class than the current crop and it’s certainly true that there is nothing remotely comparable to a Silver Cloud for sale today. All the same, the kind of person who could afford a Roller back then would buy a modern one today. It’s not the perceived class that sells it to me. It’s key attributes in my book are it’s proportions, a beautiful iteration of the classic grille, those lovely yet simple headlamps and the timeless ethereal feel I get when I very (rarely) spot one. I also quite like it’s proportions, but maybe I already mentioned that.

Gun metal grey is hardly the most exciting colour in the world but it could have been invented with this car in mind. Walnut picnic tables to hold a little Champagne and perhaps a little smoked salmon to stave off any mild hunger pangs. Lambswool so deep that you can’t even see your shoes and an environment oozing wood and leather. I wouldn’t want to own or run this car. I don’t think I could live with it’s lack of power or horrendous running costs (yes I know this is rich coming from me) but on a day like this it’s probably as close to perfection as you could get.