{"id":1747,"date":"1998-04-11T14:54:14","date_gmt":"1998-04-11T12:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/?p=1747"},"modified":"2015-11-11T15:01:33","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T14:01:33","slug":"rolls-royce-silver-seraph-the-heritage-of-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/1998\/04\/rolls-royce-silver-seraph-the-heritage-of-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph – The heritage of the past"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1504199801_RollsRoyce_Silver_Seraph\"<\/a>Rolls-Royce won’t be winning many awards for the avant-garde content of its brand-new Silver Seraph design. But the car’s classic and fluid lines may claim to make more of a breakthrough for R-R than the eighteen-year-old Silver Spirit ever did. “The key factor in this design is that it requires a lot of explanation about the renaissance of Rolls-Royce,” says Graham Hull (51 and single), who was responsible for the styling of the new car.<\/p>\n

He explains that apart from the physical design itself, there is a difference in how the public perceives the new Rolls-Royce values. So Hull and his colleagues were looking at new parameters even before they decided on a design philosophy. “There were so many assumptions, we first had to take a step back and reconsider the subject,” says Hull. From the outset, Hull had always been convinced that 1955 was RR’s finest hour.<\/p>\n

No one disagrees that the Silver Cloud, which made its debut that year, was the epitome of Rolls-Royce. “To such an extent, that some people suggested recreating the Cloud’s shape for our new model.” But Hull and his company felt a little nervous considering that idea. “It would have appealed to far too small a niche in what is already a restricted market.” Still, the Silver Cloud did play a key role in the design process of the Seraph, for its predecessor, the Silver Spirit, was still too recent for Hull to analyse.<\/p>\n

He concluded that any Rolls-Royce should have a physical presence and, as a result, communicate through body language. The image of a yacht is the closest comparison he can draw when describing his intentions. “There you have an impressive prow, a mast and a high rear deck with an inboard cabin. It was translated in the Cloud to great effect,” Hull explains, adding that, as a result, the profile of the Cloud was almost the antithesis of the wedge.<\/p>\n

He clearly inherited his affection for the Cloud from John Blatchley, who designed this marvellous piece of Rolls-Royce mobile sculpture and who was still working in Crewe when Hull arrived in 1971.<\/p>\n

The article continues in Auto & Design no. 109<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-design-story-en"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 00:20:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autodesignmagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}