From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
First-person account of a car accident involving chassis 15-EX.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 181\M10\ img030 | |
| Date | 27th March 1928 | |
| 15-EX ACCIDENT. We were on route from Paris to Boulogne having left Paris about 2.30 and were travelling easily with cut out open, the roads being wet and with slight intermittent rain. The only point to remark about the car was that both back tyres had become rather worn, the pattern just showing in the centre but being, of course, more prominent on the sides of the tread. Just before the accident, time was just about 4-30, light good but dull and it was not actually raining and we were some 12 or 14 miles from Amiens. We had just rounded a broad sweep to the right at a steady speed of about 50 and were travelling on the crown of the road now quite straight for a long way ahead but were not accelerating. Cut out being open one could be sure of this. We were just burbling along very comfortably and nothing was in sight. The road was macadam, tarred, wet but clean with a somewhat high camber but not excessive for France and car felt altogether firm on it. Some 30 or 40 yards on after we were on the straight she started slowly to crab down the left hand side of the road and this developed into a definite skid which I corrected and went into a rather slighter one in the opposite sense ( At this time I was not disturbed at all and thought definitely 'hello here's Gryll's skid all over again) then back into a very slight one in the original sense and I had a feeling that the matter was ended. Gryll's tells me he felt so too when extremely suddenly she developed a really violent skid again in the original sense & off the road we went. I had nearly got her straight once more when we hit a tree, the first one of a row of comparatively small ones planted about 1/2-way between the row of big ones and the edge of the road. We hit it just before the nearside back wheel and were moving at the time in a direction about 15° from the longitudinal axis of the car. The tree went in between N.S. wheel and frame and pulled the back axle clean off at the spherical joint. As soon as the rear ends of the springs fell off the rollers on back axle the back end dropped and tank and spare wheel were torn off also. | ||