70-Year-Old Ranjit Malik Drove this 1925 Rolls-Royce Phantom from Kashmir to Kanyakumari

Years ago, when people consumed news mostly in the morning from newspapers while sipping on Darjeeling out of fine porcelain, there used to be a column – Ripley’s Believe it or not! Tucked away towards the bottom of a page that also had comic strips, each nugget of information would inevitably begin with the words ‘Believe it or not!’ Seventy-year-old Ranjit Malik and his most recent exploit could very well have figured in one of those, and we’re willing to wager that the gentleman reading the paper in his silk dressing gown would have choked on his tea at what Ranjit has done. All for the sake of fun.

Believe it or not, he took his century-old Rolls-Royce Phantom on a joyride. He took it right from the top of India to the tip of India, covering an astonishing 3,800 kilometres as he went from Jammu to Kanyakumari.

“They universally said, 'You’ve gone insane,” he chuckled. But what prompted this insanity?

Back in the day, Ranjit used to work for ITC and toured the heartland of India selling tobacco when it was still a bad thing, but not quite the social evil it is today.

The car in question is his 1925 Rolls-Royce Phantom I Boat Tail. It’s a huge car with a commanding presence. Under the long bonnet of this open-top tourer is a 7.7-litre V12 engine that produces approximately 100bhp, according to Ranjit. To prepare for the arduous journey across the length of India, Ranjit had it fitted with an electric alternator that would charge the battery as he drove along instead of relying solely on the old-world dynamo. A smart move, considering dynamos are occasionally known to have reliability issues. He also had a set of extra instruments laid out, tucked away from the casual eye. “

I had to put a larger radiator because heat conditions can be terrible, and few other things in terms of an entire backup of meters because our old meters sometimes work, sometimes don't,” he said. Thankfully, the Phantom line always came with a 12V electrical system, which did not need tinkering. The other thing he didn’t mess with are the car’s original mechanical brakes with servo assist. Not quite as sharp as a modern disc brake, as you can imagine, but adequate.

Considering the age of the car and the nature of the joyride, a flatbed towing truck followed the entire journey along with a team of mechanics who would be able to do running repairs. Major overhauls, if any, would require a detour to a city.

The first part of the journey saw the centennial set of wheels travel on a flatbed to Jammu with Ranjit flying in from Delhi. “I reached Jammu not knowing that my son had already reached there and he wasn't willing to leave me alone because I thought I'll be driving alone. When I reached Jammu, he had already flown down there and was there and said, ‘No, no, we can't let you make an ass of yourself alone. We'll be with you.’ So that's how it happened,” he told us smiling.

The initial plan was to start from Srinagar and drive from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, making the journey a mad K to K drive, but unfortunately, a deadly bomb blast in the city around that time put paid to any hopes of that happening. So, Jammu city became the flag off point. With tensions high, it was advised that Ranjit make a quiet exit. Easier said than done when you’re staring off a journey in a car as conspicuous as his Phantom 1. Nonetheless, the team got out of Jammu but not quite to a smooth start. 

“From Jammu to Pathankot, was the first leg of approximately, I think, 300 and, but the first leg was about 150 km, it was terrible. Road works were in progress and one couldn’t even get a clean stretch of 10 to 20 kilometres. We covered very little distance and I had to put the car on the flatbed till we crossed Pathankot,” he remembered, adding, “I almost called it off.”

Thankfully, the next stretch brought much-needed relief. “From Pathankot to Jalandhar was one of the best stretches of the whole drive, with the canal flowing next to us and extremely picturesque farm side and lovely stopovers with Starbucks and McDonald's and stuff like that. So that kind of gave me some reassurance that this could be completed, and the first stage was the bad part,” Ranjit said. The whole trip took 30 days, of which 24 were spent on the road, with Ranjit, his Roller, and the team covering 250-300 kilometres every day. Which may not sound like a lot, until you factor in that Ranjit is 70 and his car is 30 years old. This is not counting the fact that it doesn’t have a roof since it’s a tourer.

The weather and the lack of protection weren’t his biggest challenges, though. “The biggest challenge by far was the road condition. Okay. The second was the traffic,” he said. In some cases, the car would have to be put on a flatbed, getting into a crowded city. “There were traffic jams in most cities for 2-3 hours, so the car would absolutely boil over and stop. I didn't want to put it through all this since it wasn't any sort of endurance run for me.”

How Ranjit Got Hands on this Rolls-Royce

Ranjit has owned this specific car for more than 30 years. “It was actually sold by Rolls-Royce to a Captain Glenn, who drove it around in France for some time and then sold it back to Rolls-Royce. From there, the erstwhile Maharaja of Vijayanagaram picked it up. And then, I don't know how, it reached Balmer Laurie, the company,” Ranjit explained.

“Interestingly, my mother-in-law, who was a teacher in La Martinere, Calcutta, said that one of her students had mentioned that his father had a Rolls-Royce in Asansol.” Given how Ranjit tracked these cars, he found it intriguing that there should be a Rolls-Royce that he didn’t know about. “I sent my brother-in-law, who was then posted in Calcutta, to go and check it out. It turned out to be very much there. Mr. Kapoor, who was the owner then, used to work for Balmer Laurie. He was quite an enthusiast because he gave me a file with his correspondence with Rolls for parts and help with the brakes, and so on and so forth. So I got a complete file from him. We negotiated for over two years for the price and finally agreed to part with it, and that's how I got it.”

Ranjit’s foray into this world of machines and mechanicals goes back 50 years when he was a young adult. “It started with an old Army disposal motorcycle, which was the only bike I could afford. I worked as a salesman in a music record shop for two months during my summer vacations to afford the 1200 bucks it cost me. That’s what got me into the habit of tinkering with old machines,” he remembered. His job at the ITC only pushed him deeper into this realm. “I joined ITC in 1980, and they posted me to small towns where I had to go to small villages to see the distribution and marketing of cigarettes. And that's when I discovered these cars which had got abandoned because of the fuel price which had suddenly shot up. A lot of people just abandoned these cars and I was at the right time at the right place to pick and choose and we could get these cars for a few thousand rupees virtually by weight. There were some cases where they were happy to donate it to me to get it out of their homes.” Some needed restoration and repairs but most were still in relatively good shape, 40 years ago.  

So what’s next on the cards? “What I'm proposing to now do is to drive around the Golden Quadrilateral with my Bentley, which I think will be far simpler and more comfortable because that car is far more modern than the Rolls,” he told us. In case you’re thinking of a modern Bentley, that one dates back to the 1950s.