Eastern intrigue: the mysterious life of a Soviet Rolls-Royce

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Not everything that gets trumpeted all over the worldwide web is true, but upon seeing this photograph we did have to scratch our heads and wonder. It’s a Rolls-Royce Wraith—a rarity on its own—but what really caught our attention here was the information that came with it: this car was supposedly gifted in 1939 by Nazi minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to Soviet Premier Vyacheslav Molotov. That's right, the signatories of the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, which gave Hitler the green light for the invasion of Poland that very same year. Let that sink in for a little while before you post your comments below.

The question we must ask is whether it can really be true, and we think probably not. Let’s start with the Rolls-Royce itself. It wears a sleek coupé body by Erdmann & Rossi. The Berlin coachbuilder supposedly built two of them, with one making it to the 1939 Berlin Motor Show.

Rolls-Royce historians hasten to add that there’s no possible von Ribbentrop or Molotov connection because the two Erdmann & Rossi-bodied Wraiths respectively went to a nobleman named Michael von Althan of Silesia, a European region spread across Poland, Bohemia and Germany, and one Herr Doberg of a company named Lindemann KG in Germany. Further information would be much appreciated.

Now look at that number plate.  Is it Russian? We thought it could well be. The most plausible assertion we could find is that the car ended up as a war trophy taken by the USSR after the war. Some say it was used by Molotov when the war was over, but other Russian owners are mentioned with disputable veracity: the clergyman Alexy I of Moscow and Nikalai Baranov, chief architect of Leningrad. Are they just rumours, or is there more to them?

While the picture does look historic, it may not be as old as you would think. After Russia, the Rolls-Royce supposedly found its way to Estonia in the 1950s and then to Latvia. We came across further pictures of it taken in the early 1970s in what is believed to be its Estonian period—note the same number plate and those treaded tyres! The buildings in the background in the first black and white picture might date from that period, too... What do you think?

Words: Jeroen Booij; pictures: archive, eag.vanatehnika.ee
 

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