There is no singular road to Pebble Beach, but this is the story of one car that made it to America’s best-known Concours d’Elegance and came home with two awards. You’ll note that the “before” photographs accompanying this Restoration Profile show a beautiful, finished car in its own right—though it was exceedingly tired in detail, with oxidized components, torn upholstery, scuffed paint, and the usual ailments borne of long-term storage.
At its most pedantic, to “restore” something means “to bring back to or put back into a former or original state” (thanks, Merriam-Webster!). Sometimes that means something has decayed over time, other times it simply means entropy has taken its toll on original components and finishes. So it was that restoring this 1923 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost was more about correcting accumulated inaccuracies than repairing the mild decay and damage. It was an undertaking made most interesting by things like replacing a previous owner’s later-model chrome-and-stainless instrument panel with the 1921-appropriate wood unit, or building a correct steering-box cover plate (plus its accurately finished fasteners) to replace the later-model piece that had been swapped on because it was more convenient for some long-forgotten operator to fill.
Building the Future by Restoring the Past
Building the Future by Restoring the Past
Building the Future by Restoring the Past
Building the Future by Restoring the Past
Building the Future by Restoring the Past
Building the Future by Restoring the Past
Building the Future by Restoring the Past
When first acquired by current owner The JBS Collection, founded and overseen by Jack Boyd Smith, Jr., this 1923 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost was a once-restored and well-maintained car that just had strayed a bit far from originality; though you wouldn’t necessarily have known that to look at it. In a lot of ways, those who made the accumulated changes couldn’t know back then how to do it exactly right. Because when you consider nobody thought to restore or collect a ’23 Rolls until the 1950s—that’s 30-some years of “previous-owner syndrome”—folks chose whatever parts would fit, even if they weren’t exact, just to keep the old car going and maybe sometimes to improve user friendliness.
One of the stated goals of the JBS Collection is “building the future by restoring the past,” meaning finding and restoring endangered examples of automotive craftsmanship. It’s a collection that showcases some of the finest specimens of pre-World War II luxury cars to be found, and the Rolls faced a considerable makeover before it would be on par with its stablemates.
“It was a job to get this back to correct configuration,” says Travis LaVine, manager of LaVine Restorations, Inc., the shop that restored this car, “a pretty serious job. That was a lot of work.” LaVine Restorations is the JBS Collection’s go-to partner for restorations and service, and the collection calls out the LaVine process for its “exhaustive research” and “skilled handcrafters with expertise in early 20th-century machining, leatherworking, metalworking, sewing, and engineering.”
When Jack purchased the Rolls, then, Travis was prepared to judge it as a worthy buy. “It was owned by Tom Lester,” Travis says, referring to the founder of Lester Tire, who owned the car from 1982 to 1984. “That was who we restored our first Pebble Beach car for back in ’87, so we knew it was going to be a good car for Jack.”
Still, in the intervening three-plus decades, time had taken its toll, and the car was ready for its refresh. “That’s increasingly common,” Travis says and compares our present internet-based world of omnipresent information against back in the 1970s when his parents started (see “A Chat with Vivian LaVine,” February 2024). “It seems many cars are getting re-restored now because the enthusiast community is just so much more aware of how to make them right.”
Research
Research
Research
Research
Research
Research
Research
The modern process involves a lot of research. To start with, what is the state to which it will be restored: “former?” Or “original?” Original, in this case, would mean discarding the body, Springfield Body Tag SS 208, in place since 1928, and installing the original-type Pickwick sedan coachwork. Or would you discard the chassis (No. 77 JH) and attempt to replicate or hunt down the 1921-vintage unit (No. 83 UG) that originally underpinned the Pall Mall touring body?
For the record, that Pickwick body was installed by the factory in 1924 (apparently 77 JH sat around for a while) for use as a “trials car,” or what we’d now call a demonstrator, at Penn Motors in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After two years in that service, it was sold into private ownership for the first time and later rebodied at the request of its new owner—a customary practice at the time. The Silver Ghost series had been in production since 1907, so it was expected that older chassis would be updated to follow fashion and to suit the evolving tastes of the owner. The Pall Mall body is of the dual-cowl phaeton variety, with a second windshield and folding cowl to make a more weather- and wind-resistant compartment for up to three rear-seat passengers.
Researching the individual and collective history of this car and its production mates is a challenge, too. When Rolls-Royce of America ceased assembly in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1931, its Waltham Avenue body plant and its records went to a successor, the Brewster & Company coachbuilding firm (a joint effort with Rolls-Royce until 1934), which in turn succumbed to the inroads of the Great Depression and mass-produced luxury car bodies in 1936.
Some of the surviving Rolls-Royce of America records were destroyed post-bankruptcy, reportedly in a flood, and what’s left now resides in private collections. You must know the right people, then, to get access to the preserved cars and information, but they’re remarkably gracious to those who come wanting to learn from the information they’re saving for posterity. Among them, Travis singles out as especially valuable the assistance of Rolls-Royce Restorers Steve Litten and Marc Armstrong of Auto Rebuilds, Inc, in Chardin, Ohio.
Equally critical to documentary evidence is assessing a range of surviving cars of the same era and type. The LaVine team assessed a dozen Silver Ghosts, ranging from 1921 to 1924, to get a feeling for what real accuracy was for the Springfield-built body and chassis. Consumer-aimed factory literature and period images were also important to the process, especially where matters of taste were concerned.
Disassembly, Documentation and Personalization
Disassembly, Documentation and Personalization
Disassembly, Documentation and Personalization
Disassembly, Documentation and Personalization
Disassembly, Documentation and Personalization
With research on this level underway, the crew at LaVine Restoration tore the Rolls all apart, documenting everything they found so nothing would be lost in the process, and the factory details for body and chassis could be remanufactured as exactly as possible within the limits of modern technology. It should come as no surprise that the industrial technology of the 1920s used many processes that are no longer practical, but at the same time, the same results can now be obtained in ways that would not have been dreamed of a century ago.
Simultaneously, restoration for concours display is a different affair from conservation for a museum setting. While judging places considerable emphasis on originality, self-expression has always had a place in this concours world. That means that, for example, a period accessory not documented as originally installed in-period might be permitted. Or, as in this case, the color choice can be a personal one, within the limits of what was available in the 1920s.
“It was most likely black when it was new,” Travis says, “but Jack wanted to go with something period-correct yet unique to the specific owner.”
Before the beautiful new color scheme could be applied to the Springfield-built body and fenders, however, that body needed reconstruction, as did the car’s mechanical elements. The chassis itself is deceptively simple (the devil is in the details): an enormous ladder frame with parallel leaf springs and a beam axle in front, and an equally robust-appearing rear axle hung from cantilevered leaf packs. It’s easy to see why so many 1920s luxury cars later saw duty as tow trucks in the 1930s. We’re fortunate that this car escaped that fate, though it’s unknown how long the first private owner kept it, or how it spent the Depression and World War II years.
By 1951, it was in collectors’ hands, where it has been since. Some of them, as Travis notes, were “tinkerers” and while their good intentions and adjustments of style weren’t harmful, by 2016 when The JBS Collection acquired 77 JH, it was a great candidate to reset the clock to 1923 and build the car Jack would have ordered—while still paying the utmost respect to the car’s history as of when body and chassis were joined in the late 1920s, and that of the craftsman who constructed them in the first place.
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