Rolls-Royce Camargue: car maker’s ugly duckling makes enticing auction prospect

January 29th 2024

The Rolls-Royce Camargue started out as the world’s priciest car but it was soon regarded as a design flop. Were the critics too cruel?

The Camargue is the Rolls-Royce they all loved to hate but this 1981 example was treated like a treasure

Ever fancied owning the most expensive car in the world? If the answer’s ‘yes’, then you’ll need to get your act together as this decidedly interesting example of Rolls-Royce’s still misunderstood Camargue is set to cross the block on the very day this issue hits the news-stands.

If you’ve already clocked the pre-sale estimate, you’ll know it’s not actually ‘the most expensive car in the world’ – but when it was unveiled in 1975 the Camargue cost an eye-watering £29,250, which did make the model the costliest new automobile on the planet.

According to one of those notoriously inaccurate inflation tools, that’s the equivalent of almost £250,000 in 2024 – which seems like peanuts in comparison to some of today’s hypercars. But times have changed.

The Camargue was the result of Rolls-Royce outsourcing its design for the first time since the war, and it handed the commission to the fêted Italian styling house Pininfarina – which, some people believe, succeeded in creating one of the most ill-drawn cars of all time.

This finesse of a Fiat commercial vehicle? Pininfarina’s lines won few admirers at launch

Tom Gidden ©2023 Courtesy of RM Sotheby’s

With lumbering coupé bodywork, the first sloping Rolls-Royce grille, too-small wheels and rear lights that may well have come from a Fiat van, it was certainly no oil painting. Inside, however, it was as luxe as you like with acres of leather, plenty of wood, the first-ever split-level climate control system and an FM radio as standard.

Despite all that, the Camargue did find a place in a 2005 book called Crap Cars by Richard Porter – but don’t let that put you off. With the 50th anniversary of its launch happening next year, we reckon all eyes will suddenly be on the wrongly maligned Camargue and prices will skyrocket (but don’t blame us if they don’t). And if you’re tempted to take a gamble on Rolls-Royce’s ugly duckling, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better example than this one being offered by RM Sotheby’s in Paris.

Delivered to its original Zurich-based owner Mohamed Dugdug in the summer of 1981 – complete with the latest self-levelling suspension licensed from Citroën (what could possibly go wrong?), the car was returned to Crewe seven years later where it was refinished in the ebony coachwork with gold pinlines that it still wears today. It also has a sunroof, a gold-plated Spirit of Ecstasy and a full re-trim in white leather with matching wool carpets.

Kept in Spain’s benign climate for the past 30 years, the car remains in superb condition – and now for the best bit: it has clocked up less than 6000 miles from new, and is on offer at no reserve. Suddenly, owning a Camargue seems quite attractive…