Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III: Blow-Up’s star car

By Martin Buckley

| 10 Jun 2025

Classic & Sports Car – Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III: Blow-Up’s star car

As the model for Rolls-Royce’s ‘celebrity customers’, this dark-blue HJ Mulliner, Park Ward Silver Cloud III was well chosen as the headlining vehicle in the 1966 film Blow-Up.

Here, olde-worlde engineering met the slick glamour of new-world styling in a coachbuilt model that appealed to the likes of Brigitte Bardot and Peter Sellers as perhaps the world’s ultimate luxury convertible.

It was certainly the most expensive – in the Rolls-Royce line-up, only the James Young Phantom V limousine cost more.

Each built-to-order example took six months to create, using lightweight steel and aluminium.

The sill plaque denotes the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III’s coachwork as the work of HJ Mulliner, Park Ward

The car appears throughout Blow-Up.

Filmed between August and October 1966, and directed by 54-year-old Michelangelo Antonioni, this immersive reflection by the maestro Italian auteur on the nature of modern celebrity, and the tension between art and commercialism, is probably the most accurate depiction on celluloid that we have of the fleeting charms of a ‘swinging’ London of almost six decades ago, but it is also the most damning.

It was never likely to be a celebration.

Antonioni’s back catalogue of the early 1960s – La Notte, L’Eclisse and Red Desert – had been masterly reflections on the rise of the economic miracle in post-war Italy and its negative effects on human relationships.

The Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III Drophead Coupé’s Spirit of Ecstasy

Famed for never repeating a shot in his superficially simple yet emotionally complex productions, Antonioni explored absence and the search for answers in stories, generally without conventional resolution.

The journey was the point of it all, not the final destination.

His was an exquisitely framed world of elegant, wealthy, but mostly unhappy people looking for meaning in an increasingly meaningless modern landscape.

Great cars often featured – you can see a Lancia Flaminia Zagato in La Notte, an Alfa Romeo 2000 Touring Spider in L’Avventura – so the choice of the Rolls-Royce was doubtless carefully considered.

Take a trip to the Swinging Sixties in the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III from the film Blow-Up

Its sheer decadence highlights the fact that we are now in a different world; one where, just a few short years before, the idea of anyone so young driving a new Rolls-Royce would have been unthinkable.

Soon to cease production (in favour of the Silver Shadow Mulliner Park Ward drophead), the shape had first been seen as the Park Ward S2 Bentley Continental drophead at Earls Court in ’59.

It was designed by 38-year-old Norwegian Vilhelm Koren and produced at Park Ward’s Willesden factory using techniques inspired by the aero industry.

It hinted that Rolls-Royce had its finger more firmly on the pulse of changing international tastes than you might have suspected, as a way of testing reactions to the styling of the Silver Shadow and T-series that were a few years from launch.

The Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III’s strong brakes, well contained body roll and light, feelsome steering make for effortless driving

The austerely elegant ‘Korenental’, first of the V8 Bentley Continentals, was a purely Park Ward rather than Mulliner, Park Ward design, and all 125 examples of the single-headlight S2 Park Ward Continentals were open cars.

Apart from its taller, 2.92:1 final-drive ratio, four-shoe front brakes, and lowered steering column and grille (to take account of the more rakish profile of the coachbuilt bodywork), differences between the standard S2 and Continental S2 were marginal.

The 6230cc V8 engine made it a rapid car by default, with no need for tweaking the carburettor sizes or compression ratios.

Koren was long gone from Pyms Lane by the time the much better-known, quad-headlight versions of his shape appeared in 1962, on the Cloud III/S3 chassis.

Drink, anyone? The Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III’s cabin speaks of ’60s excess

He let it be known that he was not keen on the new treatment, complete with its Humber-sourced indicator/sidelight units.

Buyers loved it, however, and the Park Ward Continental became even more popular in its latest form: another 300 were produced in coupé and drophead guises, including 107 Rolls-Royce variants, of which this example is perhaps the most famous.

Regrettably, chassis number SHS349C was ordered new by a certain James Savile in January 1965 and registered to an address in Scarborough.

Savile did not own the car for long, however, replacing it with a Phantom V in March that year; in truth, the disgraced DJ may never have even taken delivery of the MPW drophead, because they were in high demand and could be sold on for a premium.

This Rolls-Royce’s surging yet near-silent 6230cc V8 engine

Savile was never one to miss a promotional opportunity, and there is a picture of him ordering the car at Earls Court in 1963. He later had a white (likely secondhand) example, with his famous ‘JS’ numberplate.

There is some suggestion the movie car started life white, but was painted black for its starring role; I could be wrong, but it looks dark blue on film to me.

The first true ‘owner’ of this car was Pierre Rouve, one of the co-producers of Blow-Up and a fascinating, multi-talented character in his own right.

His co-producer, Carlo Ponti, was married to Sophia Loren, who had form driving a Cloud III Adaptation drophead in Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963).

‘Rolls-Royce buyers loved the quad-headlight version, and the Park Ward Continental was even more popular in S3 form’

In Blow-Up, which was only his second colour production (and his first in English), Antonioni shows a 1960s London in which near-Dickensian squalor, abandoned cars and leftover bomb sites of 20 years earlier intersect with the dehumanising influence of rapidly encroaching modern architecture.

It is a place still filled with tradition – red buses, black cabs and Grenadier Guards – but appears curiously deserted to modern eyes.

The streets are not rammed with traffic, parking spaces are plentiful and the young hero of the piece, 25-year-old fashion photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) can gun his £8000 open-topped status symbol through the city with silent impunity, messaging his agent, publisher and anyone else he needs to get hold of instantly on a then-wonderous Air Call radio car phone – real-life lensman Terence Donovan had a similar device in his brown Rolls-Royce.

Each unit had a number – Thomas is ‘Blue 439’ – and messages were passed on via the Air Call operator rather than caller-to-caller.

The Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III’s prominent binnacle presents the main dials

For Thomas, London is a place of vagrants, Victorian doss-houses and grand apartments, where the dispossessed of the ‘old’ city live cheek-by-jowl with the shiny new ‘swinging’ inhabitants.

These models, actors, pop stars and advertising executives crest a wave of vacuous commercialism that was perfect fodder for the cynical eye of Antonioni, who shows debutantes taking drugs with pop stars in a wave of hedonism that already feels oddly doomed.

Doomed, yet in places oddly modern, like the scene in a club where lank-haired youngsters wearing T-shirts emblazoned with counter-culture slogans – that’s Janet Street-Porter grooving on down in the silver coat, by the way – watch The Yardbirds smash a guitar at a gig.

It’s hard to believe this is a time just six years on from greasy-quiffed rocker Eddie Cochran dying in a Ford Consul taxi.

Be it London back streets or Wiltshire villages, the Rolls-Royce Cloud III’s dimensions shrink to fit

Antonioni’s lens adores the Cloud III, which is almost as much of a character as Thomas.

When he meets his agent (Peter Bowles) in a Chelsea bistro, the Rolls-Royce can be spied sneaking into the shot behind.

We see Thomas piloting EVN 734C through Hyde Park, along Stockwell Road and Queenstown Road, in a London where most people are driving Minis, old Fords, battered Renault Dauphines and even the occasional ageing Riley RM.

Allegedly, actor Hemmings was so nervous of anything happening to the drophead Rolls-Royce that he slept in it, chastened by Antonioni after the props department had deployed a prank with an underbonnet explosion involving smoke, and a bag of nuts and bolts.

This Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III was made famous by 1966 film Blow-Up

Blow-Up, considered among the top three films of the director’s stellar career, was slightly different in that there was a murder at the heart of it, apparently committed in broad daylight in an eerily empty public park on a Saturday morning.

Maryon Park in Greenwich is a place of high, whispering trees, where Thomas snaps away at anything and everything for his inspiration, including an apparently courting couple.

The young woman (Vanessa Redgrave) takes exception and begs for the film, but Thomas’ interest is piqued, and when he blows up the photographs he thinks he can see a gun and a corpse in the grainy images.

Even here, Antonioni leaves us guessing about whether or not said crime was real or a figment of the imagination of the protagonist – a youthful and not particularly likeable snapper modelled on Donovan and David Bailey.

Vilhelm Koren’s profile is subtly lower than the standard Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud’s

It is hard to feel very sorry for Thomas, who, as well as swanning around in a convertible Rolls-Royce, lives like a prince in a labyrinthine mews apartment.

Although Thomas is superficially having ‘fun’, his life is actually somewhat vacuous, and he sustains himself artistically on various non-commercial projects that involve taking pictures of homeless men in hostels.

In pursuit of his art, the snake-hipped cameraman even poses as a vagrant for the night, while hiding the Rolls-Royce around the corner for a quick getaway the following morning.

Thomas treats the Cloud III no better than the people in his life.

The Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III has no rev counter – that was reserved for its sporting Bentley sibling

He routinely hops over the door to get in, leaves it out all night with the powered roof down and is happy to use it like a posh Ford Transit, as in the famous scene in which he tries to load a giant, wooden propeller on to the back seat after a visit to a junk shop.

“You can’t treat it like that,” says the flaky girl who owns said shop. “It’s not a delivery van.”

It certainly is not. Inside, the instruments are in front of the driver in a handsome, Alvis-like binnacle.

Being a Silver Cloud III (rather than a Bentley Continental), it has no rev counter.

Despite the sense of length, there is nothing unwieldy about driving this Park Ward Drophead Coupé, which today looks much as it did on film in 1966.

‘The third-gear hold on the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III’s Hydramatic ’box adds interest to driving on twisty roads’

It seemingly goes just as well, too, having been subject to some recent mechanical refreshment by marque specialist P&A Wood.

The pushrod V8, possessed of immense torque, is about as silent as you could reasonably expect any internal-combustion engine could be.

It surges the big car away briskly from the kerb and is simply a source of silky power that wafts you in ethereal dignity from one place to the next.

You are slightly more aware of the workings of the gearbox, but this one is well set up and rarely caught out.

The Rolls-Royce’s turquoise leather was added during a later restoration

Fast corners are swept around with little body roll and the light steering has genuine feel, castoring back beautifully, so you can place the car accurately and delicately, with minimal concentration and effort.

It begins to feel quite compact, and you can see how our protagonist would have soon become used to threading it through the London thoroughfares and back streets.

The brakes are magnificent, and the third-gear hold on the Hydramatic ’box adds interest to driving on twisty roads, where speed is gathered sweetly and silently.

The post-filming history of the Blow-Up Silver Cloud III is unclear, but it lost its original numberplate at some stage (probably when it was exported) and the radio phone; it also gained turquoise leather seats, which I quite like.

At the time of writing, the current owner has the car up for sale at Fender-Broad for £275k, which in the grand scheme of things does not seem unreasonable for such a piece of history.

Images: Jack Harrison

Thanks to: Neil Fender at Fender-Broad Classic Cars

Factfile

Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III Drophead Coupé

Sold/number built 1962-’66/107
Construction steel chassis, steel and aluminium body
Engine all-alloy, ohv 6230cc V8, twin SU carburettors
Max power n/a
Max torque n/a
Transmission four-speed automatic, RWD
Suspension: front independent, by wishbones, coil springs, anti-roll bar rear live axle, radius arm, semi-elliptic leaf springs; lever-arm dampers f/r
Steering power-assisted cam and roller
Brakes drums, with gearbox-driven servo
Length 17ft 7¼in (5366mm)
Width 6ft 2¾in (1899mm)
Height 5ft 4¾in (1645mm)
Wheelbase 10ft 4in (3150mm)
Weight 4928lb (2235kg)
0-60mph 10.1 secs
Top speed 115mph
Mpg 10-14
Price new £7995
Price now £274,000*