I've always been a big fan of the Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit/Spur and its sister, the Bentley Mulsanne. These cars began production in 1981. Unfortunately, I have a few complaints about these cars:
1. Up until about the late 1980s, these cars had the homeliest looking steering wheel and steering column I had ever seen in a car. Both the steering wheel and shift indicator look like they came off of a farm tractor. This is inexcusable for a car of this caliber.
2. What is up with the cheesy AC Delco stereo they put in these cars? I believe they started with that in 1985. I’d expect to see a stereo like that in a 1986 Chevy Cavalier, and not a $100,000 car. If that isn't bad enough, a lot of the earlier models (pre 1985'ish) had manual tune radios. That's unforgivable!
3. Although I can’t say for sure since I’ve never actually sat in one, both the Rolls and the Bentley appear to have manual seat recliners. Even my 1984 Lincoln has dual power recliners. How did the engineers at Rolls-Royce somehow overlook this small detail?
4. I question whether the outside mirrors are operated manually by remote control. If you look in the center console area, there appears to be two remote controls for what I guess are the mirrors. Usually, when a car has power mirrors, there is only one switch with a toggle to select which mirror to control. I could be completely wrong on this, but those mirrors don’t look power to me.
5. I never understood Roll-Royce’s policy of not quoting power output of their 6.75L engine. It was simply rated as being “adequate” or “more than adequate” in their literature. Surely, someone must have put one of these cars on a dyno and measured the horsepower and torque of this engine. I was able to find something on the internet but I don’t know how accurate it is, or how it was obtained. Someone quoted an 1981 Silver Spur as having 260 HP @ 4000 rpm and 280.3 ft*lb @ 2500 rpm. I can believe the horsepower but the torque seems a little low. A 412 cid engine should be putting out a lot more torque than 280 ft*lb. Even the detuned 302 cid in my Lincoln puts out 250 ft*lb. I would think that the torque out of a 412 cid should be at least 350 ft*lb, and that’s being conservative. Ideally, it should be pretty close to 400 ft*lb. I’d really like to know the specifications for this engine during the 1980s.
