Richard Edgell
1929 James Young, Weyman Saloon GEN45
GEN 45 is one of two cars ordered from the factory in early 1929 by Paddon Bros. By that time I believe Commander Hugh Robert Warwick Keller was in charge of sales at Paddon Bros and wanted to show off his skills as a designer.
He ordered the two chassis to have modifications so that the dashboard layout of instruments was ‘balanced’ or symmetrical. One car was bodied by James Young and the other(GFN 71) by HJ Mulliner, both are fabric bodied. The fourth photo shows the two cars at the 2011 South of England Rally, when the sister car GFN71 was owned by John White before being acquired by Len Meades.
GEN 45 was ordered with black P100 ‘Continental’ headlamps, and matt black shutters (now available on a Goodwood car); also wiring for the black Stephen Grebel scuttle lamp. These can be seen in the first photo taken by Colin Hughes at Stowe in 1969.
The complete car was sold to a London solicitor Keith Barlow, and then to his brother after less than a year. It changed hands in 1936 and was sold to an S E Allen.
In September 1945 the sixteen year old car was sold to Daily Mirror Papers. Their chairman used it for four years doing 80,000 miles. Their chauffer told Hugh Keller that he frequently drove from London to Manchester to Southampton to London in 24 hours.
Commander Keller was able to acquire the car through Mascot Motors in 1949. A picture appears in Fasal page 143 and as the cover picture of B86. Keller kept GEN 45 until 1984 when it was acquired by the late John Eastwood. It then went through the hands of Terry Marsh(1987), Norman Gardner(1989), Paul Wood (2007)and Richard Steele (2009).
I first saw GEN 45 at a club event in 1991 when it was in the care of Norman Gardner, I thought it to be the very essence of a Vintage Rolls-Royce and when she came on the market in November 2010 I wasted no time in acquiring this famous old car.
GEN 45 took part in the inaugural gatherings of both the 20 Ghost Club and the RREC. It appeared as the Marquis of Frinton’s second car in the Terrance Rattigan film ‘The Yellow Rolls-Royce’
The fifth photo is of the car with my late great friend David Else who first encouraged me to get a 20.
