While Rolls-Royce produced more than 2,000 Phantom I chassis at its Derby factory, few cars would experience such a colourful journey as the example offered here, chassis 45AL. Built to long wheelbase specification (measuring 150.5 inches), the completed 40/50 HP Phantom I chassis was sent to the esteemed Westminster-based coachbuilder, Hooper. Here, the Rolls-Royce was finished as an Open Tourer, built to Hooper’s body design numbered 3769. Its body and bonnet were coloured Ivory, while its wings, wheels, petrol tank, and other parts finished in Princess Blue.

The Phantom I was built to fulfil an order placed by Rolls-Royce Bombay placed in July 1927, with its original sale price noted as £1,900. On 1 December 1928, the car was received in completed form in Calcutta, arriving in India at a time of colonial rule by the British Raj. Its first owner was one Mr H P Poddar, a resident of Calcutta who is thought to have owned another Hooper-bodied Rolls-Royce Tourer around the same time.

While it is not known how long its first owner kept the Phantom I, it is later recorded to have been owned by Mr Protap Roy, a prominent Indian car collector and eldest grandson of Maharaja The Honourable Sir Manmatha Nath Roy Choudhary of Santosh (present day Bangladesh). As the British Raj was ongoing—with the country yet to gain independence and be partitioned—Roy’s grandfather became the first Indian president of the Legislative Council of what then was known as “undivided” Bengal and regularly drove to chair meetings in one of many Rolls-Royce models.

Roy was born into a family background of enthusiastic car ownership and later oversaw his own collection punctuated by a Mercedes-Benz 500 K, Hispano-Suiza Carmen, MG TC, early Porsche 356, and many other Rolls-Royces. Chassis 45AL had been retained by three generations of the family before Roy removed it from its Calcutta garage and took the Phantom to Delhi. The car reportedly firing quickly into life, Roy oversaw a light restoration of the Phantom I that was, by this point, finished in dark purple. Soon after, the car won top prize at the 1967 Statesman Vintage Car Rally, with its owner always keen to drive his cars and show them at events. Roy died in 1991, and the Rolls-Royce returned to Europe most recently in the care of a Swiss collector.

Now offered for sale again with its matching-numbers engine, and accompanied by its factory build sheets further to a DuPont fitted luggage set, this storied Rolls-Royce would be a fitting addition to any other collection.