n April 1960 the Rolls-Royce Owner’s Club magazine, The Flying Lady featured a small photograph of a 1914 Silver Ghost with the only comment that it was a skiff by the Paris coachbuilding firm of Henri Labourdette. A factory placard in the photo indicated the Labourdette body number was 3577. My father was smitten by its lines and dreamed of owning such a car for the next forty years. His father was one of the sixteen founders of the Horseless Carriage Club of America (HCCA) in 1937. As a young boy at an HCCA meet in 1938, dad was drawn to a Silver Ghost Tilbury Sedan. He particularly recalled the polished nickel hood rivets and being told the entire car was built by hand. It was only thirteen years old. Dad acquired a modified Silver Ghost Piccadilly roadster from a Los Angeles scrap yard for $150 in 1949 and quickly put his troublesome Model J Duesenberg on blocks. The Ghost provided completely reliable service for the next three years of daily commuting and never ceased to amaze him by the supreme quality of even its most humble components. In spite of building an impressive collection of nine Rolls-Royce cars over the next few years, a prewar Ghost always seemed just out of reach. In 1960 his dreams of an early Ghost were rekindled by the lovely Labourdette photograph but by then the prewar Ghosts were fetching prices several times those of the later cars he had collected so easily. For fifty-two years dad has maintained and restored Rolls-Royce motorcars for clients and since my graduation from engineering school in 1987, we have worked together full time. In 1990 we completed the comprehensive restoration of a Continental Phantom II Kellner Cabriolet for the president of Sony Pictures which won a number of Best of Show awards. n 1996 we completed the restoration of a 1914 Silver Ghost torpedo tourer for our dear friend in Sweden, Marianne Tragardh. This car recieved the coveted Scher Trophy for Best Silver Ghost at the Rolls-Royce Owner’s Club National Meet as well as Most Elegant at the Newport Concours.