An iconic car made of gold

Model made with hands sans cast

Inspiration for the Rolls-Royce model was a picture of the same car used by a former ruler of a princely state.

Legendary British carmaker Rolls-Royce (RR), whose founders Henry Royce, a successful engineer, and Charles Rolls, a pioneer in car dealerships, made huge strides in automobiles since they launched their company “over a famous lunch in May 1904”, could not have been more flattered. Decades after one of their vintage car models of the 1930s-- Phantom-II, which the company’s chronicle says “had a much improved chassis”-- became a museum piece, two little known traditional Indian artisans have recently given it a new imprint of immortality – all in pure gold – to give it a larger-than-life reality.
If RR’s brilliant duo in its formative days broke “the mould of engineering and craftsmanship”, this mesmerising re-creation of that car model at the flawless hands of two goldsmiths, made use of no moulds or hollow casting techniques.

Yes, goldsmith Vijayan Venugopal and his assistant, working for a leading wholesale gold jewellry manufacturer of Thrissur in Kerala, hand-created this glittering replica of the RR Phantom-II model with just their labour of love.

This sparkling replica of the RR car model in pure 22 carat gold was the cynosure of all eyes at a just concluded three-day Gem and Jewellery International Exhibition in Chennai. It is the country’s annual “most comprehensive fine jewellery fair, which brought together manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, organised jointly by the Madras Jewellers and Diamond Merchants Association and Mumbai-based UBM India.

Interestingly, this 1934 Rolls-Royce 40/50 HP model, also described as the “Star of India”, was inspired by a picture of the same car used by the ruler of the erstwhile princely state of Rajkot during the 1930-40. Rajkot later became part of the modern Indian State of Gujarat.

The ruling Prince of Rajkot then, Dharmendra Singh Lekhaji Raj, had a passion for opulent possessions-- motor car being chief of them-- that he is stated to have bought this RR car in 1934. By the way, Dharmendra Singh was not a popular “Raja”  for he had a bad reputation of “heavily taxing his subjects and flittering away the proceeds on his own pastimes”. Mahatma Gandhi once went on a fast to urge the local people to resist this sort of royal extravagance.

While Dharmendra Singh’s tenure as the Maharaja of Rajkot was brought to a relatively quick end by his early death in 1940 when he had gone hunting for lions, a British District Collector, Bill Meredith later purchased this car and took it to England in 1965 and got it registered there.

Being an invaluable collector’s item, this iconic RR car was subsequently auctioned in 2000 for a fabulous sum of 12 million Euros (nearly Rs 78 crore) and is now kept at the Rolls-Royce Museum, recalled Thobias Kallukkaran of the Thrissur-based Angel Gold, who sponsored the recreation of this car model in gold for display at the International Fair in Chennai.“This is a unique piece; our two artisans working at our workshop took three months to make this car model with pure gold,” Kallukkaran told Deccan Herald.

“These two goldsmiths have been working for us for over 25 years now and we wanted to encourage them to bring out their talent and workmanship not only just in making gold jewellery but also a variety of other things in gold,” he said.

By sheer power of observation of a picture of the RR car, downloaded from the internet, “these two artisans used no methods of casting; they merely used ordinary goldsmith’s tools to hammer and flatten the gold into several parts with different shapes and then assembled them to resemble the original RR car,” explained Kallukkaran, adding, “it cost us Rs 60 lakh”. To indicate the head-lamps and other lights fitted to the car, the artisans used synthetic diamonds, he said.

Usually, in such international fairs, the prime focus “is only on gold ornaments,” said Kallukkaran, whose jewellery house in Kerala boasts of “delicate, extremely intricate and elaborate jewellery collections”. But in the same breath, he said “we wanted to show to the people that we make variety items in gold other than traditional ornaments too.”  He was stressing the they had made a master piece of the RR car model this time to fashion its replica in gold.

In the previous two years for similar international fairs, they made a typical country bullock cart of Kerala and “Kuttanada Kettuvallam” (a house boat that floats like a swan in backwaters of Kuttanad in Kerala) in pure gold, added Kallukaran.

Like for any big car-maker, engineering excellence and innovation have driven Rolls-Royce to scale new peaks all through the 20th century into the new millennium as it designed and built better engines, even as the company diversified into aero engines since the 1940s’. But what memorable hallmarking in gold could it ask for than this uniquely crafted piece in gold by two humble Indian artisans?