These days you can really only imagine a Rolls-Royce being used for one thing: transporting the wealthy in the lap of luxury. But back in the 1900s, when Rolls was one of only a handful of automakers out there, its cars were used for all sorts of purposes: rallying, towing, even surgery on the front lines of the First World War.

Take this 1913 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost London-to-Edinburgh convertible, for example. One of the highly coveted cars that was built after Ernest W. Hives drove the 400 miles between the two cities in his own Silver Ghost, this particular example was bought second-hand by pioneering dental surgeon Auguste Charles Valadier shortly after the outbreak of the Great War in 1915. Valadier had it retrofitted with a dentist's chair, drills, and all manner of utensils, and then drove it out to the front lines where it served as his mobile operating room. After the war, Valadier was named a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in France and knighted in England for the lifesaving techniques he pioneered, paving the way to modern reconstructive plastic surgery.

As if that wasn't an exciting enough life for the Rolls, it was then turned into a tow truck, and later, raced extensively in the 1960s. Now it's been consigned to Bonhams, which estimates it will fetch between £600,000 and £800,000 (approximately $900K to $1.2 million at today's rates) in its upcoming auction at the Goodwood Festival of Speed—considerably more than the £1016 for which it was originally purchased.

via Bonhams

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