Rolls-Royce marks 120 years of the Silver Ghost, the car that built the marque

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is marking the 120th anniversary of the 40/50 H.P., the motor car the world came to know as the Silver Ghost. It is the model that established the marque's standing for engineering excellence, refinement and reliability, and its launch year underpins the whole celebration.

The announcement is under the heading of an enduring symbol of excellence, dated 26 October 2026. The carmaker's own account frames the anniversary around two registers at once: the documented record of endurance trials and international competition, and the personal testimony of the people who owned and encountered the car.

Those two bodies of evidence, the formal and the remembered, are treated as parts of one history. Rolls-Royce argues that the Silver Ghost has lasted as a name because the engineering feats are matched by the trust owners placed in the car, and by stories that still attach to individual examples.

The endurance record is unusually rich for a single model. The Silver Ghost earned the marque its reputation during a period when reliability was the scarcest luxury in motoring, and long-distance trials were the standard by which a manufacturer's engineering was judged by the public.

The personal accounts offer a quieter perspective. Where the trial record is a matter of public claim and result, the recollections of owners describe a motor car admired by contemporary commentators and depended upon for everyday travel, at a time when motoring was far from dependable.

Together, Rolls-Royce says, the two perspectives explain why the name persists. The brand's framing treats the Silver Ghost not as a single stately exhibit but as a model whose reputation was built twice: once in competition, and again in the steady, private confidence of its buyers.

What the Silver Ghost established

The 40/50 H.P. matters to us here because it is the origin story of a brand we cover across our garage section. Rolls-Royce, now owned by BMW, builds from a reputation that this one model secured: refinement, silence and the promise that a car would simply keep going.

In our guide to the best British car brands, from Mini to McLaren, we place Rolls-Royce first among eleven marques and note that BMW controls it. That ownership is part of the Silver Ghost's afterlife: the name it established now is atop a line of ultra-luxury cars built in Goodwood.

Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Land Rover and the rest are mostly foreign-owned today, and the Silver Ghost is a reminder of the era before that. The anniversary marks the model that gave the marque its claim on excellence, long before BMW Group brought it into its luxury portfolio.

The value of the name the Silver Ghost made is visible in our ranking of the most expensive cars in the world. Among cars built this century, the Rolls-Royce Amethyst Droptail leads at a reported $40 million, a one-off Coachbuild commission and the second of only four Droptails.

That Droptail carries a 6.75-liter twin-turbo V12, and it is above the rest of a list that runs down through Pagani, Koenigsegg and Lamborghini to the McLaren Speedtail at $2.25 million.

The absolute record for any car is still the $142 million paid for a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe at a closed auction in 2022, one of only two built. The private-sale record remains the $70 million for a 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO.

The Silver Ghost itself predates every figure on that list by decades, yet it is the model those modern commissions descend from. Rolls-Royce's anniversary is, in effect, a claim about continuity: the Coachbuild Droptails are the same promise the Ghost made in 1906, priced for a different century.

Our brand page on Rolls-Royce carries the history behind the name and a detailed list of current cars and technical specs. The anniversary does not change the lineup, but it repositions the company's whole catalog as the working out of an idea this one model first proved.

What the anniversary covers

The celebration as announced is a reflection rather than a product launch. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has not tied the milestone to a new model, a limited edition or a revived nameplate, and it has disclosed no accompanying release beyond the account of the model's history.

What the company is doing instead is returning the marque's story to its source. The PressClub piece presents the anniversary as an occasion to weigh the documented trial record against the remembered experience of owners, and to let the two stand together as one account.

That is a deliberately understated way to mark 120 years, and it fits the marque's manner. No sales figures, no timeline of events, no dates for future commemoration were given; the anniversary is treated as a matter of history and reputation rather than commerce.