RR Camargue

I have an abiding fondness for the White Elephants of automotive history and they don't come much more elephantine than the 1975 Rolls Royce Camargue. Born long overdue, in the midst of the oil crisis, many felt the Camargue doomed from the start. Its controversial styling didn't help . For the first time since the war, Rolls had entrusted the design of one of its cars to an outsider, the usually dependable Pininfarina. The Italian house had repaid this trust with a design heavily cribbed from one of its earlier cars, the Fiat 130 Coupe of 1971.

Unfortunately, scaling up the Fiat's simple, elegant geometric profile into the monster that became the Camargue proved less successful. The car never looked quite right, with its droopy tail, oversized wheel arches and ever so slightly wonky proportions.

Yet one of my most cherished drives was around Lake Geneva in a Camargue, and I have coveted one ever since. The car had last been driven by the Shah of Iran, its previous owner, 20 years earlier. His cigar was still in the ash-tray.

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