“Let me tell you when I first got to sit in [the car],” says 65-year old Azam Monem as we sat at his plush office sipping fine Darjeeling tea and munching on crisp bakarkhanis. Monem is the founder and chief executive of Amstead Tea & Commodities, which engages in tea exports and beverage retail distribution.
“I was a toddler at the time and I remember going on a drive with my grandfather. This must have been in the early 1960s. In the evenings, he used to take my grandmother and all the children in the family for a breezy spin down the Strand Road next to the river,” he reminisces. Although the coach built by coachwork builder Hooper featured a pair of pop-up captain seats in the cabin, they were never used because there were just too many children. “I used to sit between my grandparents on the rear seat while seven-eight cousins sat on the enormous floor of the cabin.”
The drive was almost inevitably a loop wherein the magnificent car glided past Kolkata’s ubiquitous Grand Hotel, further towards the Strand Road and then back home. The family ritual of hawa khane jana (savouring the breeze) would be interrupted only by a single stop for potato crisps at a rupee a pack. Clearly, a special memory of a special moment in a special car!
In fact, it was a special car, even for a Rolls-Royce, because this particular Phantom III was once the chosen set of wheels for the Governor of Bombay. Bearing chassis number 3CP-100, this car was shipped from England to Bombay (now Mumbai) in September 1937. In India, it became the official car of Sir Roger Lumley, who served as Bombay’s Governor from 1937 to 1943. Thereafter it was acquired by a certain J G L Spencer, before it was bought by Khan Bahadur Golam Kibria, the son-in-law of the Nawab of Jalpaiguri, and eventually Monem's grandfather, sometime in the early 1950s.
“My grandfather was a big fan of British cars,” Monem explains. At one point in time, the family had up to three cars bearing the Spirit of Ecstasy. “There was a Phantom I for his personal use, and another Phantom I, which was the family car. And then along came this one.” There was an additional Phantom III saloon as well.
That love and passion for automobiles was passed on to Monem's dad, whose love was for flamboyant American cars, notably Buicks, the German Mercedes-Benz 108 Ponton, and cars with tainfils.
Monem's life as a petrol-head also started with a similar fantasy for an American car. “My dream car used to be a Ford Mustang Fastback. I used a dinky toy—which I can’t find anymore—that I was keen on,” he says. “My father tells me that when the war broke out in ’65, [I was more upset that I] hadn’t driven a Mustang yet!” he chuckles. Clearly, petrol didn’t just run in the fuel tanks of the family cars; it ran in the Monem family's veins, too.
“The first time my grandfather allowed me to drive the Phantom III was when I was around 19. My classes for B.Com (Bachelor of Commerce) used to start at six in the morning, for which I would drive to college. Once when I couldn’t find parking any where near campus, I ended up parking it in the section reserved for professors. After that, I got a stern warning from the principal!”
Having learnt to drive on the family Ambassador, getting into the driver’s seat of this huge limousine was quite the experience. Even though the roads were emptier compared to today, the Phantom’s length (over five metres), and the lack of power steering wouldn’t have made things easy. “It’s the sort of sensation that never really fades from memory. It was a massive car with plush leather, wood, and fine fabrics. The gearshift lever was mounted on the floor and to the right. The ride was extremely comfortable. It was a really grand experience,” he recalls.
Powered by a near silent and massive 7.3-litre V12 engine—an engine that would eventually lead to the birth of the legendary Rolls-Royce Merlin that powered Spitfires and Hurricanes through WW II—the silky-smooth delivery of power to the wheels would have been quite the rush for a barely-out-of-teens Monem, a young boy who was used to the rough and ready workhorse of the Ambassador.
“I also remember the smell [of the car]—a combination of wood, leather, and petrol. I even spoke to a perfumer to develop that scent!” he smiles. A fitting fragrance for a man whose garage also includes a classic Bentley, a Mercedes-AMG, and a Ferrari 430.
Back to the Phantom, Monem admits that this one was a little unusual. “The ceiling of the Phantom had a few inches extra. I always wondered why, because chauffeurs never wore top hats inside the car. Then I started reading and discovered that Sir Lumley, would often drive this car instead of being chauffeured in it, requested for the additional three inches roof that were ‘made-to-order’.”
There were other differences, too. Instead of the usual tool kit under the driver’s seat, this one has a space for an umbrella and, curiously, golf clubs.
Following his grandfather’s passing, the Phantom was mainly driven by an uncle who eventually passed the car on to Monem. “The uncle who looked after the car moved to the US. So, the car was left on its own in the garage. At the time, I owned and maintained a Triumph TR4 and an MG TC. My uncle told me that if I was anyway restoring and maintaining other cars, I could look after the Phantom as well," he says of the conversation he had sometime around 1998.
Today, this hugely imposing and handsome Rolls-Royce is a regular participant at events across Kolkata. A marvel on wheels, this car features twin ignition coils, two distributors, twin spark plugs per cylinder, and even two valves per cylinder. It can be run with all 12 cylinders firing freely or, in slow moving city traffic, with only one bank of six cylinders operating.
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