This is a coffee table built around a 6.75 liter Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow V8, it has a glass tabletop, and it comes with an RR-etched square glass decanter with matching glassware.
The 6.75 liter Rolls-Royce V8 was in production for decades, vastly outliving its initially-planned lifecycle, and it was used in everything from your standard Rollers and Bentleys to luxury boats, and even a Porsche 911-based hot rod.
This is a coffee table built around a 6.75 liter Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow V8, it has a glass tabletop, and it comes with an RR-etched square glass decanter with matching glassware.
History Speedrun: The Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow V8 Engine
When Rolls-Royce lengthened the stroke of the Silver Shadow’s V8 for the 1970 model year, taking it from 6.23 liters (6,230 cc) to 6.75 liters (6,750 cc), it settled on a displacement it would never abandon. Amazingly, that same engine, though now developed almost beyond recognition, was still being fitted to new cars half a century later in the year 2020.
The Rolls-Royce V8 itself predated the Shadow, in 1953 Chief Engineer Harry Grylls handed engine designer Jack Phillips a brief to increase the power potential to at least 50% more than the preexisting inline-six, but it could have no increase in weight, as little extra cost as possible, no loss of refinement, and it all had to fit the engine bay of the forthcoming Silver Cloud. It was a tall order to say the least.
“To do a Rolls-Royce job one needs to be better than anyone else,” Phillips later wrote of the project. His answer was a 90º overhead valve V8 with the block and heads cast in aluminum alloy, wet cast-iron cylinder liners, a gear-driven camshaft, and hydraulic tappets.
This engine entered production in 1959 in the Silver Cloud II, Bentley S2, and Phantom V at 6.23 liters, with an oversquare bore and stroke of 104.14 mm by 91.44 mm. Rumors at the time held it was an American design built under license, but this was simply untrue. It was an in-house Crewe design through and through.
The Silver Shadow arrived in October of 1965 at £6,556, the first Rolls-Royce with unitary body construction, four-wheel disc brakes, and self-leveling independent suspension. The 6.23 liter V8 came over from the Cloud largely unchanged at first. In-keeping with company practice, Rolls-Royce declined to publish power output figures, describing the power only as “adequate,” though registration authorities in several markets required figures, and around 170 bhp was recorded for the early cars.
The 1970 displacement enlargement kept the 104.14 mm bore and stretched the stroke to 99.06 mm. Emissions equipment was beginning to strangle output, particularly in the all-important American market, and the extra displacement restored torque without asking the engine to work any harder.
The 6.75 liter Rolls-Royce V8 was in production for decades, vastly outliving the team that developed it, and it was used in everything from your standard Rollers and Bentleys to luxury boats, and even a Porsche 911-based hot rod.
European type-approval records credited the new engine with about 187 bhp, the factory itself, as before, published no figures at all. Twin SU carburetors fed it, and drive went through the GM Turbo Hydramatic 400 3-speed that had replaced the old 4-speed on home-market cars in 1968. The decade would bring lower compression ratios for unleaded fuel and Lucas electronic ignition, and heavily equipped US-market cars gave away a good deal of power.
Some versions of the engine were sold for marine use, and as such were unencumbered by emissions equipment – they carried power ratings of 220 to 240 bhp.
The 6.75 spread well beyond the standard Rolls-Royce sedan, it also powered the long-wheelbase Shadow, the Bentley T-series, the two-door coupes named the Corniche, and the Pininfarina-styled Camargue from 1975. The 1977 revisions produced the Silver Shadow II, Bentley T2, and Silver Wraith II, and even the coachbuilt 1979 Phantom VI limousine received the 6.75.
By the time saloon production ended in June of 1980, Rolls-Royce had built 30,057 Silver Shadows, making it the best-selling Rolls-Royce to that point in history, a record that stood until the first-generation Ghost of 2009 to 2019.
The engine outlived the car by 40 years, it carried the Silver Spirit generation, picked up a turbocharger for the 1982 Bentley Mulsanne Turbo, and remained in Bentley production cars under Volkswagen ownership.
The last of the line went into the Bentley Mulsanne 6.75 Edition of 2020, a run of 30 cars whose version of the engine produced 530 bhp and a hefty 811 lb ft of torque, a full 61 years after the first L-series V8 left Crewe.
The Rolls-Royce 6.75 Liter V8 Coffee Table Shown Here
This is a custom coffee table built around a 6.75 liter Rolls-Royce V8 that was sourced from a 1974 to 1980 Silver Shadow. The engine has been professionally cleaned and powder-coated inside and out in blue and silver, with a custom-engraved aluminum cover over the water pump carrying the Rolls-Royce emblem.
The table has a number of bespoke details, including an illuminated “RR” emblem at the rear, blue lighting beneath the engine and inside the spark-plug openings, and polished carburetors that stick up through cut openings in the glass tabletop.
The glass measures 42 inches by 34 inches and it’s supported on four adjustable posts, while rolling casters under the engine make the 27 inch high table a little easier to move and reposition when required.
The glass measures 42 inches by 34 inches and it’s supported on four adjustable posts, while rolling casters under the engine make the 27 inch high table a little easier to move and reposition when required.
Also included is a matching presentation set comprising an “RR” etched square glass decanter, four rocks glasses, and slate coasters housed in a fitted wooden box.
This coffee table is now being offered at no reserve out of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, with complimentary crating included. If you’d like to read more or place a bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Bring a Trailer + Rolls-Royce
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
