It takes half a mile. Just half a mile, and she is back. The Flying Lady, standing on her square plinth. Imperious. Unforgettables spread wings. I haven’t driven a Seventies Rolls Corniche in thirty years, but the memory is vivid. So is that silent, strolling motion beneath us.
This is an experiment by Halcyon. A Surrey startup, three years old, looking to save 120 classics from that specific, strange era. Half will get electric hearts. The other half? They keep the old 6.75-liter V8 pushrod. A split identity for a split century.
Engineers with a Gripe
Matthew Pearson, Charlie Metcalfe, Will Burdett. Met at Bath Uni, bonded over Formula Student, launched themselves into the UK auto scene. They went their separate ways but never stopped talking. “We wanted to build cars we actually cared about,” Metcalfe says.
“People were too pessimistic after Covid. About the future. Especially about EVs. So we gave them Rolls-Royce.”
A fair point. The company spent a century trying to make combustion engines as quiet and smooth as an electric motor anyway. Why fight history when you can finish the thought?
They picked the Shadow chassis. And the Corniche offshoot. Specifically 1977 to 1980 models. Why then? It was a mature platform. Few engineering changes. Reliable baseline. But also… space. Plenty of it. Batteries need room, and the weight distribution of the electric version matches the original. A happy accident of engineering geometry.
They raised cash, launched Halcyon, and spun off Evice Technologies. A separate entity to sell this know-how to other small firms, affordably. A pragmatic move. Keep the dream pure, make money on the side.
Which makes you wonder: do we restore these cars for the nostalgia, or for the irony? 🖤
