This and other pictures have been flooding the media since Friday afternoon after a sad mishap with the trailer transport of a 1936 Rolls Royce Phantom III Barker. A man from Switzerland had bought the car from Retrolegends in The Netherlands and picked up the car with a healthy Range Rover plus brandnew trailer. Only minutes after they left from the showroom Henny Kennis got a phonecall from the Swiss guys if he wanted to come for help as things had gone wrong. Terribly wrong as you can see. The only good news is that no serious injuries occurred.
But the fine Rolls is scrap. The trailer is scrap. The Range Rover is scrap. It is of course very easy to judge from a distance so let's try to analyse and face some facts. According to Henny Kennis the incident is a miracle to him. The Phantom III (yes a heavy car) was tied down correctly. The trailer was brandnew. The towing car in very good condition, at least cosmetically. According to eyewitnesses the combination got into trouble already at relatively low speed, not more than 55 km/h (35 mph). Henny Kennis presumes that one possible cause may be the air suspension (AES) of the Range Rover. Either the car was lowered actively when loading the Rolls and not put back to Drive-settings. Or the system may (we repeat 'may') have produced a failure resulting in instability of the car and combination. There are many pages on the web about EAS failures.
No mattter what the exact cause was, the results are dramatic (see Youtube). With a huge loss for the new owner of the Rolls Royce: the car was not insured! This is not the first nor the last trailer incident. What can we learn from this.
1. analyse very well beforehand the risks of any trailer transport. Professional transport may be expensive, but on hindsight possible very cheap in comparison
2. NEVER do a transport without a proper transport insurance if the car is of any interest to you. Don't leave home before checking your insurance agent.
3. You are welcome to give us your thoughts. But please think twice. We will not publish any nonsense. Yet we will favour all positive critics and comments.
Please drive safely. Trail wisely. Have a great week.