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The Silver Shadow II Anniversary

The Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow II Anniversary was launched when Rolls-Royce existed 75 years. Since the company was founded in 1904 the celebration of 75 years of existence took place in 1979.
The Silver Shadow II Anniversary can be recognised by red badges on the grille, boot lid and in the door openings. Further on every Anniversary has a plaque in the glove compartment of the dashboard.

A Georgian silver Anniversary with the red badge on the grille.

Silver Shadow II and one Camargue
The red badges were only applied to Rolls-Royces and not to Bentleys, for Rolls-Royce existed 75 years, and not Bentley. Only 4-door saloons were provided with red signs, not long wheelbases and not Corniches. But there was one exception. The Rolls-Royce Camargue with chassisnumber JRH50085 was an anniversary Camargue in the one-off colour Coronation Blue Fire Mist.

Colourscheme
All cars that were destined for the American market, had the colourscheme Georgian silver with grey and red interior. All cars for the other markets had this or other colours. Colours I've met are gold, silver sand, royal blue over grey (2-tone with black interior), peacock blue, walnut over honey, other dark blue colours, honey, and so on. All those cars had a red badge, whether this was a good combination of colours or not.

A RHD Anniversary with the colour Silver sand.

Number of Anniversaries
There is a lot of confusion about the numbers of Anniversaries that were produced. Many books and articles mention a number of 75 cars, but Roßfeld says on his site that there must have been 100 made, 25 for the UK homemarket and 75 for the overseas customers. Henry Perkins however pointed me out that there are 3 separate plaques made. The texts are:
   This motor car is one of 75 for our United Kingdom customers with a special badge to mark the 75th Anniversary of Rolls-Royce.
   This motor car is one of 75 for our overseas customers with a special badge to mark the 75th Anniversary of Rolls-Royce.
   This motor car is one of 75 designed in a special colour scheme for our overseas customers to mark the 75th Anniversary of Rolls-Royce.

On 11th July 2007 the press release about these Anniversaries was published on Ebay. The text is:
"LYNDHURST, N.J. - Seventy five "special" Rolls-Royce cars are to be sold in the United States to mark the 75th anniversary of the first car built by Henry Royce.
These anniversary Silver Shadow II cars will be finished in Georgian silver with charcoal grey leather upholstery and red carpets. A small plaque will be fitted inside the glove compartment where it will not be "ostentatious" says Rolls-Royce Motors.
Another feature of the special cars is likely to be spotted only by the observant. The famous RR badge, normally painted in black, will be in red. Legend claims that the badge lettering was changed from red to black to mark the death of Sir Henry Royce in1933. In fact, Sir Henry had himself decided to change the lettering as black was better suited to the color schemes.
Each car will be sold with a "certificate of authenticity" and the serial numbers will be kept in a private file at the factory in Crewe, England. Rolls-Royce officials are determined to prevent any fraudulent "conversions" or copies of the car being passed off as genuine.
An additional 75 anniversary cars will be sold in Britain and a third batch of 75 will be sold in other countries.
George Lewis, president of Rolls-Royce Motors Inc., the British company's subsidiary in this country, said he expects these special cars to start arriving in the United States in the Fall. He predicts they will rapidly become collectors's items and will be eagerly sought."

Reading this text and these plaques there must have been three markets where Rolls-Royce celebrated its jubilee, which makes the total of Anniversaries 225. I never found this number in any publication and I never have found a prove that the production of this number of Anniversary cars has ever been realised. So I keep investigating and when I find prove of real numbers of production, I'll inform you immediately on this page.

Three different plaques with Anniversary text.

Chassisnumbers of the Anniversaries
An anniversary could be ordered, but the customer didn't need to. So it lasted more than 800 chassisnumbers before the complete series of Anniversaries were sold. The first Anniversary I have registered is the SRH37987, the last one the SRK38814. Production of the Anniversaries started in July 1979 and ended probably in November 1979.

The gray and red interior of an American Anniversary.

I give you the chassisnumber of the Anniversaries as far as I know them. If anyone knows an Anniversary that is not in this list, please contact me. You can find me under the CONTACT-button.

The only Anniversary Camargue.

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