A Maharaja’s Collection Of Rolls-Royce Garbage Collectors
While each Princely State in India likes to take credit for being the one responsible for putting the mighty Rolls-Royce Motor Cars in their place, it was in fact the State of Alwar and Maharaja Jai Singh who can rightfully take credit for this legendary debacle.
The story, if one isn’t in the know, goes like this… sometime back in the 1920s, Maharaja Jai Singh went for a stroll around Mayfair and happened upon the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars showroom there. Known for buying his cars in multiples of three, the Maharaja sought the help of a salesman, but was entirely ignored.
The car was the epitome of British automotive engineering at the time, a staple of the rich and aristocratic, and came with its own cache. The salesman took the Maharaja to be just another Indian immigrant in London and, one might speculate, perhaps dismissed him. A revered figure to his statesmen in Alwar, Jai Singh returned, cheque book in hand and lawyer in tow, and famously bought all six Rolls-Royce cars in the showroom on that day. The cars were shipped to India, no small feat back in the ’20s… the entire exercise probably costing as much as a row of townhouses in London back then. But the Maharaja was adamant. When the cars reached Alwar, they were retrofitted with brooms and garbage containers at the back. In some instances, their interiors were overhauled—luxurious cowhide-covered seats thrown aside and replaced with steel stools, and water tanks attached to the boots.
The Maharaja instructed that the cars be utilised for street sweeping and garbage collection and transportation from every corner of the city. These transformed vehicles were then introduced to the unsuspecting public in Alwar, a small state in rural Rajasthan, surely creating a spectacle to behold. The Maharaja became stuff of legends, giving rise to myths and various versions of the now-famous story. It underwent changes and was ‘masala-fied,’ following the tradition of old tales, with many forgetting the original. Rolls-Royce is said to have later come up with its own programme for catering to Indian Maharajas in response to the incident, even going so far as to apologising to Jai Singh for their bad judgement.