1926 Rolls-Royce Twenty Tourer

December is certainly a month many of us look forward to. One is because it’s the holiday season and the other is naturally because it’s Christmas and I celebrate Christmas. And here at Your Dream Auto, we are also going to be giving you interesting articles of very rare and interesting cars for you to look forward to, so sit back and keep coming back to follow our updates. And here it is, for our first post for the month of December, an ultra rare 1926 Rolls-Royce Twenty Tourer of which we have a fine example right here in Malaysia.

At one glance, the Rolls-Royce Twenty Tourer will look like a typical automobile from it’s era but once you get closer to it you will realise that a Rolls-Royce will always be a Rolls-Royce (enthusiasts will know what I mean). And also do bear in mind that this particular car was built before Rolls-Royce acquired Bentley (check out our earlier write-up on ‘The difference between a classic Rolls-Royce and a classic Bentley’) so which means that they were not sharing DNAs yet.

This particular Rolls-Royce was one of only three lightweight tourers ever built by the Connaught Coachbuilders. As with most vintage cars during this time, only the chassis was built by the manufacturer in this case Rolls-Royce and the body was made and fitted by coachbuilders. The engine was a 3.1 litre (3,127 cc to be exact), Rolls-Royce inline 6 cylinder mated with a four-speed gearbox. Just in case you were wondering what the ‘Twenty’ means in the name of the car, it’s simply means it’s a 20horsepower engine and depending on the weight and size of the body put on it’s chassis, some cars were said to be able to go up to almost 100 km/h. But what makes this particular Rolls-Royce Twenty Tourer more interesting is the fact that the current owner has got most of it’s history intact which even includes when the car was shipped to Malaysia.

To give a brief history, this particular car was shipped to West Malaysia (then known as Malaya) in June 1926. It was then used in a rubber estate in one of the states and even survived World War II. The current owner then acquired this piece of history back in 1981 and did a full restoration which was completed in 1983. Since then the owner has decided to keep the car around Malaysia and Singapore to preserve it’s history and this Rolls-Royce Twenty Tourer is currently believed to be the oldest surviving Rolls-Royce in good condition  in this part of the world. So do enjoy the shots I took below though I must admit that the car looks way better in real life rather than in the photos.