The Streamlined Phantom

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With his neatly clipped moustache and desert khakis, old Monty didn’t cut a particularly rakish figure. But let’s be fair – he was a military man with important work to do, and that dictated dress standards. Alan Samuel Butler was an altogether different character. He learnt to fly during the Kaiser War and, with a considerable inheritance burning a hole in his pocket, became an aviation enthusiast in peacetime. He was a dashing sort, tearing through the skies in sports aircraft and thundering along the highways in one of his Rolls-Royces and Bentleys, and before long he was gainfully employed as Chairman of de Havilland Aircraft.

What links the two men is a Rolls-Royce Phantom III, commissioned by Butler and built by H J Mulliner. Were it not for the Jonckheere car, it could contest the title of the most striking Rolls-Royce ever made, with its wind-tunnel streamlining, reverse-raked windscreen and lightning trim. It suited Butler to a tee, and he must have enjoyed it considerably, but the outbreak of war saw him loan it to the War Office for the transport of high-ranking officers and VIPs. When it fell into Monty’s hands, he became so smitten with it that he ended up keeping it.

Mick Walsh tells of the development of 3AX79 and its brushes with great statesmen, while a de Havilland Comet plays a supporting rôle, in the September issue of The Automobile, available now.

Words by Zack Stiling. Photographs by Mick Walsh.

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