Taking a spin back in time to the grand dames of Ceylon’s roads
As a great admirer of Sri Lanka after spending many unforgettable holidays there enjoying the scenery, hospitality, accommodation, food, sunshine and collections of classic cars, I was delighted to be asked to review a most important contribution to the topic of Rolls-Royce cars in the country. Do not think this is a niche publication; it is far from that and offers a fascinating tour of Sri Lanka through the prism of its motoring heritage and its affiliation with Rolls-Royce cars in particular.
Rolls-Royce: the respectful term that has long represented the king of cars has entered the language of many cultures to convey the acme of manufacturing achievement. Rolls-Royce is the benchmark by which all other motor cars are measured. ‘Rolls-Royce in Ceylon’ is a book of masterly scholarship but at the same time an eminently readable treatise whose appeal extends far beyond devotees of the old car movement.
Authored jointly by two celebrated motoring writers, Roger Thiedeman and Sir John Stuttard, this book is the product of their complementary heavyweight talents. The one – Roger Thiedeman, domiciled in Australia – is a son of Sri Lanka with almost galactic knowledge of the island encompassing its geography, history, politics, peoples, and psyche, to say nothing of his unparalleled knowledge of the cars, buses, trucks, trams and trains that have plied the highways and byways of Sri Lanka’s busy cities, its lush hinterlands, mountain retreats, tropical forests and coastal resorts, from the earliest days to the modern age.
The other – Sir John Stuttard – a gifted writer, and formidably successful British businessman whose curriculum vitae includes the Lord Mayoralty of London and chairmanship of the world’s oldest Rolls-Royce society, The 20-Ghost Club, marries his forensic grasp of the Rolls-Royce marque to his encyclopaedic command of the biographies and historiography that lie hidden behind the importers, sellers, buyers, chauffeurs and owners of the magnificent procession of Rolls-Royce cars that has graced Sri Lanka throughout the past one hundred years. Some are still there, some have rotted away, and some have vanished without trace. This book tracks down almost all of them and revels in the telling of their stories.
Call it Serendib, Taprobane, Ratna-Dweepa, Ceylon, or Sri Lanka, the country has forever been the Pearl of the Indian Ocean despite being buffeted by colonial carpetbaggers across a millennium or more. ‘Rolls-Royce in Ceylon’ guides the reader from the island’s earliest recorded days, when Buddhism arrived almost 2,500 years ago, via the wisdom of the great irrigating monarch King Parakrama Bahu I, to unwelcome raids from southern India that upset the peace for centuries until a dominant monarchy emerged in Kandy in 1590 and ruled for the next 230 years. The book charts the history of foreign influence from the sixteenth century on, successively Portuguese, Dutch and British, and describes the antics of competing European powers hell-bent on the pursuit of their mercantilist goals in times when pillage, plunder and power triumphed through persuasion, blackmail and the barrel of a gun. The island’s phenomenal natural resources, coupled with the industrious work ethic of its resilient population, were harnessed by successive invaders, whose various cultural impacts have helped shape the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. In a calm and matter-of-fact, yet entertaining, style, this book charts the course of these periodic uproars.
Throughout the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, British occupation brought seminal changes to the island. These were largely wrought by the British East India Company, that rapacious and ruthless joint stock concern, founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874, which spearheaded trade with East Asia. Supported by naval and military enforcement, the company secured for the British Empire large parts of the Indian sub-continent, present day Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, as well as Ceylon. The Treaty of Amiens in 1802 temporarily ended hostilities among warring European nations. Valuing the strategic importance of deep-harboured islands, Britain wrested Ceylon from the Dutch that year and declared it a Crown Colony.
For the next 150 years British rule was conducted in comparatively civilised symbiosis (at least that is the perhaps patronising perception of a Britisher rather than a Sri Lankan). ‘Rolls-Royce in Ceylon’ traces the development of the island under colonial supervision as abundant natural resources were exploited and prosperity blossomed.
The book shows us how a fungal coffee-leaf disease (Hemileia vastatrix) devastated the country’s staple crop in the early 1870s, but the East India Company had brought experimental tea plants from China to Peradeniya as far back as 1824 and it was Scotsman James Taylor who established the first tea plantation, the Loolecondera Estate, in 1867 whereafter the evergreen shrubs (Camellia assamica and Camellia sinensis) rapidly supplanted Ceylon’s reliance on coffee as its principal export. Tea planters waxed rich, with both the scions of local dynasties and colonial playboys – the latter often the weaker sons of wealthy British families who had failed to make it back home – turning the sunny uplands of the island into horizonless carpets of lush emerald green. Mansions (bungalows) were built, and new roads cut, while a technically challenging railway network, begun in 1858, had laid 1,000 miles of track by 1905. The island was opened up to production, trade, and commerce.
The dawn of the motoring age at the end of the 1800s started to populate the roads with new and exciting vehicles, the cream of which are described in this lavishly illustrated book.
While nouveau riche tea planters were making money and the island’s indigenous movers and shakers were consolidating their holdings, a second strand of burgeoning success was profiting from Ceylon’s newfound wealth. This book weaves the story of the rise of the arrack renters. Begun under the auspices of Dutch distillers, the practice was enthusiastically carried on under British rule. The allocation by government auction of licences to retail across the island the alcoholic spirit made from fermented coconut sap generated copious amounts of cash. With complete freedom to set prices and without restriction on the volumes sold, the profits from this highly lucrative liquor trade were regularly ploughed into other businesses such as land ownership, tea, rubber, and coconut estates, graphite and gems.
Rolls-Royce cars are identified by chassis number, a unique alphanumeric code given to each chassis built. Before 1946 Rolls-Royce did not build their own bodies, each was bespoke and erected by a coachbuilder to customer specification. The first Rolls-Royce recorded in Ceylon appeared on the island in 1921, a Silver Ghost imported by the Alford family who owned a range of businesses in Colombo. Built in 1914, the car was bodied by coachbuilder Salmons in the cabriolet style. The book goes on to describe in great detail another 28 Rolls-Royce cars that came to Ceylon over the next 30 years. It delves into the backgrounds of their owners and importers, details their businesses, and relates the histories of their families, whether established local dynasties or British settlers. The background and work of the famous Bawa brothers and their great good taste in owning a number of Rolls-Royces is explored.
When I had finished this book, my knowledge was hugely increased; it has been a most enjoyable experience and I can commend ‘Rolls-Royce in Ceylon’ unreservedly.
(Rolls-Royce in Ceylon, published by The 20-Ghost Club in the UK, and priced at £50 including p&p to Sri Lanka, is scheduled for publication in January 2026. To pre-order or purchase copies email johnstuttard@btinternet.com)
