Black Sucking Dick in Car
When you see a Range Rover go by, do you think of royal dukes or Rich Homie Quan? It's a trick question. This may seem like a hip thing—in particular a hip-hop thing—but the first "murdered out" paint job on a car (translation: sporting an aftermarket color scheme of flat black) was done not for a rapper but for Queen Elizabeth's uncle Prince Henry, the Duke of Gloucester.
Getty Images
Born in 1900, Henry was the third son of George V and Queen Mary. He was the father of the incredibly dashing and tragic Prince William of Gloucester, who died in a plane crash in 1972 and for whom the present Prince William is named.
Henry was the husband of the longest-lived member of the royal family and my own personal favorite, the indomitable Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, daughter of the 7th Duke of Buccleuch.
He was also a car aficionado with rather theatrical tastes, and in 1960 he commissioned Rolls-Royce and the coachbuilder James Young (in those days you could still buy just the chassis and have the body designed separately) to equip chassis 5AT30 with a Phantom V seven-passenger limousine body loaded with startling extras: 1930s-style R-100 headlights, an eagle hood ornament, wind deflectors on front and rear doors, and, most arrestingly, a flamboyant and slightly sinister two-tone paint job, with matte black on the body over lacquer fenders. Take that, Lil Wayne!
The valets at the Beverly Hills Hotel would definitely leave this one up front—and they do. T&C spotted a new Bentley, similarly attired, outside the hotel just a few weeks back.
Stellene Vollandes and Getty
Earlier, Prince Henry had had a Phantom IV built, in 1951, and in some of its features it was a dress rehearsal for the 1960 car, including matte coachwork. But that iteration was not considered a success, and the radical paint concept did not last long. (The Phantom IV can be seen in a gloss finish in the 1966 Gregory Peck movie Arabesque.)
The Phantom V pictured at the top of this post made such a profound impression on the streets of London that it spawned a hundred Lamborghinis aspiring to the same effect. The present Duke of Gloucester is earnest and cozy (picture a British Warren Buffett), a bookish fellow who trained as an architect and has none of his late brother's poetic, Bloomsbury style. He's just not the Batmobile type, but clearly he knows a gentleman's car when he sees one. The Phantom V is still in use by Prince Richard and his family for state occasions today.
This story appears in the September 2017 issue of Town & Country.
David Netto Contributing Editor David Netto is a writer and interior designer.
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Source: https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/sporting/a10364136/matte-black-cars/
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