1982 Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit Is Down on Bourbon Street

Our last few Down on the Street vehicles were shot in the Mile High City, where I live, but today we'll be heading way down south to the French Quarter of New Orleans, where I spotted a beautiful 42-year-old Rolls-Royce a few weeks back. It's time to crank up the Champion Jack Dupree or maybe some Professor Longhair and admire this fine Louisiana machine.

I was in New Orleans to work as Chief Justice of the 24 Hours of Lemons Supreme Court at the Cain't Git Bayou race at NOLA Motorsports Park. One of the better entries there was this Jaguar XJS with Ford 5.4 Triton swap and top-notch Mad Max theme (which included a reference to the Gulag punishment from Beyond Thunderdome). That was an impressive British machine, for sure, but no Roller.

The Silver Spirit was built from the 1980 through 1997 model years. This is a Mark I, made from 1980 through 1989. Just over 8,000 were built at the Crewe plant.

The MSRP for this car was a stunning $111,000, which comes to about $367,644 in 2024 dollars.