Ayrspeed Open Clouds are modern conversions of 1956-65 Rolls-Royce Silver Clouds from four-door sedans into two-door convertibles, with subtle, almost invisible upgrades and updates.
After many months of hands-on prototyping work with the Cloud body, Ayrspeed appreciates its beauty more and more. Deleting the clutter of the back doors brings out the lovely and beautifully resolved curves to look even better.
It seems to us more and more as we look at the shape that the Cloud was originally sketched as a huge grand touring sports car, and that the back doors were added later. If you look at them, those little back doors are a silly size for a limousine. We love ditching the doors to show the purity of the car’s lines: Open Clouds enhance the kinetic automotive sculpture that is a Silver Cloud.
The inspiration for the Open Cloud series is the Mulliner Park Ward conversions carried out for Rolls-Royce. The Mulliner coachbuilding company was owned by Rolls-Royce at that point.
Ayrspeed has introduced various invisible but effective improvements to the design.
Open Clouds still look like the Mulliner cars, with an optional new design of the folding top to descend inside the body rather than being dumped on top of the tonneau panel with a duvet thrown over it. This has required localised redesigns under the surface. The correct and original lumpy perambulator look remains available.
There is massive internal strengthening of the body structure to introduce side impact protection and to improve the torsional rigidity of the body. The scuttle-shake and rattles of the original Mulliner conversions have been eliminated. The idea of rattling RRs may surprise some, but with current values of the original cars at $650,000 USD and rising, not many people have actually experienced Mulliner’s Rolls-Royce conversions juddering over bumps.
The substantial new steelwork secreted within the body at sill/rocker panel level weighs about the same as the deleted steel roof, but that weight has descended by four feet, lowering the car’s centre of gravity but leaving the overall weight similar. This means that the silky ride of the Cloud is preserved and slightly improved, but the dynamic improvements to structural stiffness combined with the lowered centre of gravity offer a substantial improvement to the car’s handling, should you require that either for emergencies or for entertainment.
It’s interesting to note that the Cloud and Bentley S weigh about the same as a MkVI, despite being very much bigger: their structure and chassis are inevitably a lot thinner than the MkVI. To compensate for that, the massive Ayrspeed structural body strengthening may stiffen up the chassis rather than the other way round.
The body is still rubber mounted: this avoids the harshness that comes with too stiff a structure. We aim for the perfect balance of structural stiffness and ride quality.
Mulliner’s approach to convertible Clouds was essentially superficial coachbuilding to a budget, with fine finishing detail.
Ayrspeed’s approach is a change of design direction towards holistic internal structural overkill, based on long evaluation and design experience with fearsomely fast boutique high-performance sports and track cars.
The origins of the Open Cloud body structure design go back to the early 1990s and the Ayrspeed Six XK120 replicas, which replaced the crude Jaguar ladder chassis with a blend of spaceframe and perimeter frame structures in medium and heavy steel tubing. The two main side tubes going into the Open Cloud bracing structure are the same stonking thick-walled 4″ round-tube drainpipes used to tame the big-block AC 427 Cobras.
The chassis beneath the Silver Cloud conversions remains unaltered, but rather than having a flexible roofless body relying on the chassis for stiffness, Ayrspeed’s substructures add stiffness to the entire structure of the car.
It may seem arrogant to ‘improve’ a Rolls-Royce coachbuilt by Mulliner Park Ward, but just because high-end cars are very expensive does not mean they are always entirely well executed. Take a look under a 1970s Ferrari for a real shocker.
Interior
The interior is fresh, executed in correct Connolly leather, and access to the back seats has been rethought. The Mulliner seat backs don’t tip forwards enough for easy entry to the back seats, so Ayrspeed’s sideways but effective solution is to use an electric/hydraulic motor to tip the entire seat structure upwards and forwards. This also allows the rear of the seat to be height-adjustable and suspended on rubber pads, a little extra touch of luxury.
Electrical
It’s unrealistic to expect sixty-year-old electrics to be completely reliable without some attention, and most failures-to-proceed are electrical in nature.
The Cloud wiring is either inspected and refurbished, or replaced with modern wire, relays and fusing. Quality is still old-school, both old and new wires remain reassuringly thick, and the changes are subtle or invisible.
Modern materials and methods are used where they don’t impinge on the styling of the car. For example, new sound-deadening mat is remarkably effective, and while the period fascias of original AM frequency radios are worth preserving, the internals are not. Discreet new sound systems rule.
Old-school dynamos are still reliable technology, but we would replace a faulty one with a Dynamator, visually original but with modern alternator internals.
Soft top
The electrically/hydraulically operated soft top frame is a modified version of a complete roof system made by a major manufacturer, ensuring a long-term worldwide supply of the frame, hydraulic and electric components used. These special cars will retain their value as a long-term investment, and for that they must remain practical and easily repairable.
Our roof design optionally allows the roof to be retracted further inside the car, allowing the pleasing curve of the waist swage line to shine, uninterrupted by the previous clumsy dumping of the roof on top of the tonneau panel. Possibly Mulliner were starved of budget.
This redesign optionally allows a longer and more pleasing rear window panel, set at a more dramatic angle and with a slightly lower roof crown. This involves no loss of headroom, as we use a new heavy roof material that provides the required silence and serenity without the need for a thick inner headliner.
The rear passenger windows are also slightly larger, offering safer rear quarter vision and making the rear seat passengers feel less claustrophobic.
This also makes the roof look slightly sleeker and lower, although the improvements are subtle and would only be noticeable if an Open Cloud were parked next to a Mulliner car.
Originality
The Silver Cloud III’s 6.75-litre V8 is a well-developed engine that remained in use from 1965 until 1997. The GM 400 transmission is also strong and reliable. Once the electrical system is sorted out, there is no reason why an Ayrspeed Open Cloud should be any less reliable than a new vehicle. Possibly more reliable: it has thousands fewer parts and complexities than a modern, and it has no preplanned component failures at set mileages.
Depending on your use of the car, a large range of updates and upgrades can be either fitted during its build, or retro-fitted to existing Open Clouds, with anything from the options list.
Rescue
One of the pleasing aspects of this whole project is that we replace much of the rear half of the external bodywork with new panels, as well as fabricating new inner and outer rocker structures and new door panels. With this level of major reconstruction, all of the usual Cloud body rust is completely cut out. Nearly all Silver Clouds have a surprising, sometimes shocking amount of structural corrosion deep in their structures, often – very often – in the front body mounting area which is a rust trap. The substantial extent of our reconstruction technique means that we can rescue rusty but otherwise worthwhile Silver Clouds with corrosion that has gone beyond economic restoration – and return them to their former glory and more.
Storm Clouds
The Storm Cloud is essentially a Silver Cloud with a Bentley Turbo engine and box. The Cloud III has an adequate performance, with realistically 250bhp and 300+lbs.ft of torque pushing 4600lbs of car. With the same basic 6.75-litre RR V8, the Bentley Turbo R makes 300+bhp and something over 420lbs.ft of torque pushing a 5000lb car. The performance of a good Bentley Turbo R will raise the eyebrows of even the most jaded driver. The standard V8 Silver Cloud’s 0-60mph time is reasonable at 13.5 seconds, but the 7-second battleship rush of the Bentley is genuinely rapid. It’s also exhilarating: you are pushed backwards very hard into an excellent armchair.
An Ayrspeed-converted Silver Cloud would weigh in at roughly 4500lbs, so using a managed, injected and turbocharged version of the same engine, it would be substantially – but secretly – faster than a Bentley Turbo R.
The 1990s computers controlling the turbo Bentley engine’s ignition and injection are now of the same period as Atari and Commodore PCs: it would be optimistic to expect reliability. Ayrspeed would use new engine control computers in conjunction with Omex Technology with our own mapping, optionally releasing even more power from the engine.
Storm Clouds speak softly and carry a very big stick.
OPTIONS LIST 2022
Any paint colour, roof colour, trim colour and material choice is available. A re-veneer in African Mahogany looks glorious when matched with quiet interior colours.
Landaulette roof: either the front section or the rear section can be convertible, or optionally both, with a central bar and division. The four-door format can also be retained. This cannot look as good as a two-door, but if you need four doors it’s an option.
The Surrey top option is a detachable hard front roof section that stows in the trunk.
Modern electric power steering.
Fuel injection and custom mapping.
Eco clean burn gas/propane switchable fuel option. (also reduces fuel cost by 40%)
Multi-calliper vented disc brakes.
Concert system – block-rocking beats, but visually discreet.
Cocktail system – mini fridge/ice maker, spirits rack in trunk.
Caps
0 Header
1
4 and 5 Researching the construction of the original Mulliner cars reveals a mixture of very good and not so good workmanship and design.
6 Tipping the seats forward for access to the rear is a minor challenge. Hydraulics and electrics will offer a solution.
7 The long-lived 6.75-litre RR engine is reliable and quite powerful, so there’s no reason to change it. An overhaul will yield another 100,000 miles of silky torque.
8 The same applies to the SU carburettors. Overhauled with modern component compounds to cope with current poor-quality fuels, they are good to go for many years.
9 Ancient electrics can be the source of failures to proceed, although Rolls-Royces obviously never break down. Refurbishment, or replacement and optional updates/upgrades is the smart move.
10 The second or production prototype is Iain Ayre’s personal Bentley S1, although Open Clouds are usually based on Cloud III. Structurally the cars are identical, it’s just a matter of flavour.
11 Again a matter of personal flavour – the 1957 Bentley’s 4.9-litre straight six is silky, torquey, economical and sculpturally beautiful. Different strokes, literally and pleasingly.
12 Very entertaining experience with the massive performance of a Bentley Turbo R has encouraged Ayrspeed to offer the fitting of a Turbo R drivetrain to Open Clouds to create the Storm Cloud.
.
.