When Russian model Natasha Poly recently celebrated her 30th birthday, she invited her friends to Amsterdam where her bacchanalia's theme was The Great Gatsby - F. Scott-Fitzgerald's novel inspired by the parties he had attended while visiting Long Island's north shore.He began planning the novel in 1923, desiring to produce, in his words, "something new—something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned."
In chapter 3 we read ... "his Rolls Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. It was a rich cream color, bright and there in it’s monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns.”
The centre-piece of Natasha's party was a Rolls Royce from the next decade and we started to look for details which might help us identify the year, model and coachmaker. Not easy as it was always hidden by the bright young things posing for pictures. The disc wheel covers, elegant shape of the front wings, windscreen shape and twin rear-hinged 'suicide doors' should help us - as well as the vertical hinged panels in the bonnet as opposed to louvres. We could suggest a mid-thirties 20/25 Sportsman's Saloon, but is the coachbuilder Hooper? Barker? Gurney Nutting? Mann Egerton? Park Ward? As always, we turn to our readers who will surely come to our rescue?
(Text Robin Batchelor, pictures courtesy Vogue)