The Pebble Beach Concours week held each August on the picturesque Monterey Peninsula always has plenty of surprises with the absolute crème de la crème of collector cars the world over in attendance and an ever-growing number of special events.

However, I wasn’t quite prepared some years back when I walked into Bonham’s and Butterfield’s Auction tent at the Quail Lodge Resort and Golf Club in the Carmel Valley to find the oldest known Rolls-Royce in the world on display. The last time I had seen the diminutive 1904 10hp two-seater, Rolls-Royce car no. 20154, was in Scotland in 1980.




David Berthon in 1980 aged 36 driving the oldest Rolls-Royce in the world


Bonham’s had brought this historic Rolls-Royce to Carmel to publicise its auction at Olympia in London later that year. A fitting location considering that it was displayed at the Olympia Show in February 1905 after being exhibited at the Paris Salon in the late fall of 1904 with Rolls-Royce records confirming its delivery from the Manchester Works in November that year.



Our 1910 Italian built S.C.A.T. Tourer outside Lord Montagu’s Beaulieu House in the grounds of Britain’s National Motor Museum whilst on tour in the U.K. in 1980. I did 2,600 miles around Britain and then put the car on display at the Museum for six months.

Chatting with a long-standing acquaintance from Bonhams it was obvious that he considered this historic Rolls-Royce would be highly fought over on the auction floor.

Certainly, it was great to be re-acquainted with 20154 for in 1980 it provided quite some excitement for this old car enthusiast. Diana and I were having a meal in the delightful Scottish township of Perth while on tour in our Italian-built 1910 S.C.A.T. tourer on our way to the start of the Golden Jubilee Rally of the Veteran Car Club of Great Britain in Edinburgh.

The night was wet and miserable and after checking into a farmhouse B and B we motored down under acetylene and kerosene lights into Perth township with our daughters, then seven and nine, for a hearty meal. I was in Perth to visit the Dewars distillery earlier that day. The Scottish company’s representative in Sydney had given me some sponsorship money to attend the rally and had asked if I could visit Dewars facility and show their staff the car on my way up to Edinburgh.

Halfway through our meal a very affable Scotsman wandered into the restaurant and asked for the person driving the very early car parked outside. Upon introduction he insisted that I should take my S.C.A.T. to his coach house for the night “for safe keeping”. On arrival at “Fernhill”, his 14-acre estate overlooking the township, he backed his Rolls-Royce Corniche out of the coach house to make room for our S.C.A.T. which spent the night in close company with a 1913 six-cylinder 24hp Wolseley tourer.



Thirty years later David and Diana Berthon catching up with the oldest Rolls-Royce again in the Bonhams Auction Marquee at Quail Lodge in the Carmel Valley. Note the change of colour.


This delightful and generous Scot turned out to be Thomas Love, the owner of a long-standing family Antique emporium dating from the 1850’s and the local Citroen dealer. Generously entrusted with a Citroen for the evening to return to our B and B we were invited back for breakfast the next morning. Whilst Diana and the children were taken to see the wild Deer at the bottom of the garden, I was taken to another coach house to “see something rather special.”

One can imagine my excitement when I was introduced to the oldest Rolls-Royce in the world alongside a recently restored 1913 Rolls-Royce 40/50hp limousine. Thomas had been asked to purchase the oldest Rolls-Royce when the car’s previous owner Oliver Langton, a prominent early speedway rider, became too old to drive and care for it. Langton was keen for this historic Rolls-Royce to remain in the British Isles and knew that Thomas had the where with all to buy it.

The opportunity to motor around the Love’s family estate in this very historic car was a real high point for this early Rolls-Royce enthusiast. Like the later Silver Ghost its mechanical refinement for 1904, especially with just two cylinders was surprising, and set it well above the competition.

Sadly, after owning it for thirty years, ill health forced Thomas Love to part with the rarity and at the Bonhams Auction it sold to a U.K collector for $AU8.3 million, around twice the auction estimate, setting a record price for a veteran car, classified at pre-1905.