Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts’ Club Celebration at Windsor The Queen’s Golden Jubilee 2002

AX 201, the original Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, is worth an astronomical amount of money by all accounts, many millions of pounds, but it is not for sale! It did however come to Windsor as the star exhibit of The Rolls Royce and Bentley Celebration in honour of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. The car was built in 1907 and was originally used by the company’s managing director Claude Johnston. The car won a Gold Medal in the 1907 Scottish Reliability Trials and almost immediately thereafter on the longer RAC reliability test where it covered 14,371 miles in five weeks with no mechanical failures. It is stories such as this which gave rise to the Rolls Royce legend which lives on to this day, and is why this event in Windsor was such a spectacle. Starting in the Home Park at 10.00am the assembled cars, some 500 of them, set off for the Castle. Roads were closed as the cars paraded through the town and into Windsor Castle where they were viewed by HM The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. Afterwards the cars drove out of the Castle and down The Long Walk where cars, motorbikes and bicycles are not normally permitted. A selected 200 or so cars then entered the grounds of Frogmore while the rest travelled out to Smiths Lawn for a mass Rolls Royce and Bentley picnic!pp. 176 illusts #0820