It is very rare that you see a Rolls Royce with Italian Coachwork come up for sale, but here you go. This is one of only 531 models built, with bodies built by the Italian design firm of Pinninfarina. This was the most expensive car built during it’s time period (with a US price of $147,000 which is equivalent to $600,000 today…) with parts that are truly unobtainable today. So is this Roller as special as it seems?


I think I will let the listing speak for itself…

The Camargue was the Rolls-Royce’s flagship and the most expensive production car in the world. At its official U.S. launch, the Camargue had already been on sale in the UK for over a year. The New York Times made much of the fact that the U.S. price at this stage was approximately $15,000 higher than the UK price. In the 1970s, many European models retailed for significantly less in the U.S. than they did in Europe in order to compete with prices set aggressively by “Detriot’s Big Three” and Japanese importers. The manufacturer rejected this approach with the Camargue, referencing the high cost of safety and pollution engineering needed to adapt the few cars (approximately 30 per year) it expected to send to North America in 1976.

The Camargue shares its platform with the Rolls-Royce Corniche and Silver Shadow. It is powered by the same 6.75 litre V8 engine as the Silver Shadow, though the Camargue is slightly more powerful. The transmission was also carried over — a GM turbo-hydramatic 3-speed transmission. The first 65 Camargues produced used SU carburetors, with the remaining using Solex units; whilst American specification cars utilising fuel injection as implemented in the Silver Spirit series. These are rare. The Camargue was fitted with the Silver Shadow II’s power rack and pinion steering rack in February 1977. In 1979, it received the hydraulic and suspension system of the Silver Spirit.

With a 3048 mm (120 in) wheelbase, the Camargue was the first Rolls-Royce automobile to be designed to metric dimensions, and was the first Rolls-Royce to feature an inclined rather than perfectly vertical grille; the Camargue’s grille slants at an inclined angle of seven degrees. It is also the widest Rolls-Royce grille manufactured.

This beautiful 1986 is the last year of its manufacture Rolls-Royce Camargue – finished in Silver Sand with hand-painted chocolate fine-lines to the waist-rail. The interior is finished in its original chocolate Connolly hides with contrasting cream (light tan) piping. The rugs follow the same theme. This is a 1 owner* Canadian delivered example (exactly the same specification to the US) and so reads in kilometres; 103,000 which translates to a low 64,000 miles. A very clean, very straight and entirely original presentation throughout. As testimony, we did not even clean under the hood for the photos. This is how she came to us. As importantly, it has been maintained meticulously.

The asking price for this unusual Rolls is $88,000 which isn’t really off the mark at all. I can’t afford it, but I’m sure someone will… Just look at that interior. There is one thing that looks a bit odd to my eye though, and that’s the vinyl roof… I am not sure if Pinninfarina designed the car to have one installed… What do you think? See the listing here: [sc:ebay itemid=”251776644518″ linktext=”1986 Rolls-Royce Camargue ” ]