Dec 5: Rolls Royce Maharaja

Pretty exciting day, when a new Rolls Royce Special Edition is unveiled to its adoring public. And this one is super special and limited, since Rolls has decided to limit its sale to the Middle East, actually only Dubai. The reason? Simple, there has only been one built (so far), but others are planned for less affluent markets, so you won't have to move, in order to get one of your very own.

The name of this rather exclusive Roller? The Phantom Maharaja. Great moniker, eh? Named after those obscenely wealthy Indian rulers of times gone by, who were a great source of custom Rolls Royce's. Got me to thinking about a few other possible special editions........for Russia, the Oligarch, for North Korea, the Oppression, or the Corruption for China. One final idea, for the United States, the Corpulent. You can come up with others later, since I must move on.

Maharaja. This got me to thinking about those wealthy Indian princes, who were decadent in the extreme. With a little research, I found a plethora of custom cars, usually Rolls Royce's that, these individuals had commissioned for themselves at, as you can imagine, huge costs. An example.......

No, I don't know where the idea for this one came from, but it has one feature that shows up a lot on these custom builds, that is, the snake shaped horn on the front fender. Rolls must have got a deal on them, since they have ended up on numerous old custom Rollers ("Your Highness, there is one last embellishment that, we can highly recommend, and for you, we can offer such a deal!").

One Rolls in particular stood out and that was this model done for the Maharaja of Kota, Umed Singh.........

.......called the Tiger Car, since Umed used it to lead his hunting parties into the great unknown. Note the silver hood to distinguish this beauty from his neighbours'. And also the snake horn, but hey, all your wealthy friends have them on their RR's as well. So what else would a hunting Rolls Royce need, when heading into those (at the time) vast jungles of India?

Yes, this is a start, a high caliber mounted gun and notice all the spots for rifles on the rack below. Ok, so as I said, this is a start, but what else might come in handy?

It may not look like it, but this is a cannon used for hunting elephant. What, you thought that the pistol in the previous picture, was going to pull down one of Dumbo's ancestors? Pretty even fight, one unarmed pachyderm verses a cannon.

But this Rolls is called the Tiger Car for a reason, since hunting tigers was its main purpose. The cannon would be overkill, not to mention a rather unfair way to bring down one of those beauties, so let's make it a more even fight. Got any ideas (and don't look ahead, please?).

No guesses? Well, see below.........

The Tiger car had a trailer and mounted on that trailer was a machine gun. And that machine gun's purpose was not to chase away those pesky peasants, annoyingly looking for loose change or maybe even a few crumbs from your extravagant picnic lunch. Not a chance. These folks were true sportsmen, so they used that innocent looking machine gun to hunt tigers! No kidding. No wonder there are so few of those beautiful, stripped cats roaming the Indian countryside these days.

The Rolls Royce Phantom Maharaja. Great salute to the good old days, when money was running free and no one cared how you spent your leisure time.

Way to go Rolls, I'm so looking forward to see your next extra, special limited edition for our Russian friends, the Phantom Revolution.

Until next time.......