The Rolls-Royce Garage in Snowdonia

I have a confession. I love old cars. I know it’s not very PC to ‘fess up to an addiction for ancient, expensive, polluting vintage cars - but I have been fanatical about them since I was a boy.

My grandfather owned a 1960 Morris Minor with stick out trafficators - (indicators if you’re under 40) and as soon I showed an interest, at the age of six, I was under the bonnet. But it’s the really old stuff that sets my heart racing. My addiction began with my childhood Saturday job at Pembrokeshire Motor Museum in the 1970s - cleaning the exhibits in the school holidays. I’ve lost count of the times I waxed ancient Bentleys, inhaled damp leather inside Rolls Royces and sniffed seeping engine oil beneath dowager Daimlers.

So you see, I’ve got it bad. Mind you I’ve never been mad enough to buy one of these ruinous old barges. I just keep trying to persuade my friends to do so. Like boat owners - they say the two happiest days of your life are when you buy them and then when you sell them. But my childhood fascination lives on and few weeks pass by without grazing the Internet, dreaming of life behind the wheel of a venerable piece of British motoring history.

All of which brings me to Bethesda in Snowdonia. To the names that are synonymous with the great motoring marques - Crewe and Goodwood - you must now add Bethesda to the list: Bethesda owes its fortune to the 19th century development of slate quarrying. It shares its name with the Nonconformist chapel in the main street, inspired by the religious revival of the same period. Not far from Bethesda’s modest terraced houses you’ll find the old Penrhyn Slate Quarry workshops.

The Penrhyn Slate Quarries were developed in 1770 by Richard Pennant, the first Baron Penrhyn. It was the biggest opencast system in the world, the quarries once forming a vast amphitheatre, a mile long and 1200 feet deep, hewn in terraces. The mules and carts of the early days were superseded by a special railway. But now it’s cars from the golden age of motoring that occupy the stone and slate sheds.

The Real Car Company was set up in the 1980s by Ray Arnold and Ian Johnstone - it was a hobby that got out of hand. They started their business with a single car, all they could afford, which they sold quickly and before they knew it they had four or five on their hands. These days they have forty to fifty vintage Rolls Royces and Bentleys for sale. Despite recessions, there’s no shortage of people who fly from all corners of the world to come here and invest their money in something more interesting than shares. Even when the Nasdaq’s nose-diving or the Footsie is in free-fall, quality vintage cars never go out of fashion - and Snowdonia is where the connoisseurs come looking. 

Walking through the workshop door it hits me: the familiar childhood smells of warming engine oil. The 1940s black Rolls Royce closest to me offers rear door handles which open with the same clunk as old railway carriages. Then the waft comes over me: ancient, slightly damp Wilton carpet infused with cigar smoke accompanied by the pleasing reek of fading leather, scorched in the sun and silent keeper of so many secrets. If only the cars could talk.

Over the years Princess Margaret’s Rolls has passed through these workshops - along with the cars once owned by numerous Indian royals from the days of the Raj. Today, looking rather tired in a corner, awaiting a new owner, is the Rolls Royce once used by Bomber Harries to tour Britain’s wartime airfields.

“Fancy a ride?” says Ray. Do I fancy a ride in a vintage Rolls Royce around Snowdonia? What do you think.

I’ve never sat in the back of a moving Rolls Royce until today. My childhood Saturday job confined me to cleaning static exhibits that had seen better days.

I resist the temptation to wave through the window as we pass the shoppers of Bethesda. The Rolls is enormous; wide and long. The back seat is like a leather sofa you’d sink into in a nightclub after having too much to drink.

We progress magisterially through the narrow roads. You can’t hear a thing from the engine - though it’s huge enough to power a small aircraft. In its literature, Rolls Royce would only ever describe its car’s performance as ‘adequate’. Silent as a ghost the engine might be - but in a car with the aerodynamics of a garden shed, it’s the wind whistling around elderly door seals that is our constant accompaniment. I know it’s impolite to ask - but this one’s yours for a shade under thirty grand.

If we were driving a brand new Roller through any town in Britain I sense it wouldn’t be long before the someone pulled a key down the shiny doors, but in a car this old all I can see is smiles from pedestrians and other motorists. There is something admirable rather than enviable about the guardians of these old motors.

Ray and Ian’s specialty is what they call ‘oily rag’ cars - vehicles to use, rather than museum exhibits. From their base in Snowdonia hunched over their laptops the world is scoured for the next ‘barn find’ to bring back to life. From the U.S. and an old Empire, cars older than your grandmother will limp in here. They won’t respray or reupholster - that would be akin to buying your mother a facelift. 

But instead the over-engineered mechanicals: the engine, gearbox and running gear will be inconspicuously serviced and readied for another lifetime of driving. In the hills that once provided the slate that roofed an empire, the age of the Internet means Bethesda is again the centre of another worldwide trade.

Jamie Owen, 2015.