Nothing but a Rolls-Royce or seven would do for the old maharajas of India, whether for flaunting their wealth, tiger hunting or important municipal tasks - such as collecting the rubbish. Amrit Dhillon reports

Insane extravagance was a hallmark of India's erstwhile royal families, from architecture, jewels, food and sex to the armies of servants employed in their palaces. Able to resist everything except temptation, the princes and maharajas swooned with desire on seeing the first Rolls-Royce. They succumbed to its charms immediately and never bored of it. It remained the queen of every royal automobile harem, presiding snootily over the lesser concubines - the Cadillacs, the Buicks and the Lincolns.

In a new book, Rolls-Royce and the Indian Princes, published by Roli Books in New Delhi, motoring writer Murad Ali Baig recounts a hugely successful relationship. As the ultimate in luxury, the Rolls-Royce was a perfect match for the sybaritic lifestyle of the princes.

More than 20,000 Rolls-Royces were built before the First World War and about 20 per cent of them were for India; it has been estimated that, on average, each maharaja had 3·5 Rollers. Since there were about 230 maharajas (excluding the minor ones), that means about 900 cars between 1908 and 1939.

One of the most famous stories about the maharajas describes the exquisite pleasure of delayed revenge. The Maharaja of Alwar walked into a Mayfair car showroom in the 1920s and pointed to a Rolls-Royce Phantom II Tourer. He looked nondescript, almost shabby. The young salesman snubbed him, convinced the man was wasting his time. The maharaja asked for the manager. "I will have every one of these," he said, pointing to seven cars. "But there is one condition - this young man escorts them to India." The young man did so, much to the envy of his mates. On the appointed day, the cars were arrayed in front of the maharaja's palace, paintwork gleaming and engines purring as the proud salesman stood by. Finally, the man himself appeared on the steps, gave a perfunctory nod in the direction of the cars and told his assistant to use them for collecting municipal rubbish.

"That incident was burnt into the collective family memory," said the present-day Maharaja of Alwar, Jeetender Singh. "We were perhaps the only royal family that was allowed to buy any car except a Rolls-Royce. We have numerous vintage cars but not a single Rolls."

Rolls-Royce satisfied every conceivable whim in the finishing touches. It hardly had a choice, really, because after extravagance, the next most prominent trait of the maharajas was eccentricity. The Maharaja of Jamnagar, for example, sent the company one of his wife's pink slippers to ensure that his Phantom II was painted in exactly the right hue.

Many maharajas preferred cabriolet versions that enabled them to sit on a raised seat in the rear of the automobile, so that their subjects could see them easily and pay homage. Some opted for the "purdah" model with thick curtains on the windows to protect the royal ladies from male stares.

Sometimes, though, it was servants who needed to be invisible. "A 1933 Rolls-Royce 20/30 (Sedanca de Ville) that belonged to Maharani Sethu Parvati Bai of Travancore had a small stool on the floor. On it sat a dwarf who massaged the queen's legs," writes Baig.

The current Maharaja of Udaipur, Arvind Mewar, recalls that his grandfather, being handicapped, asked the company to put the controls in the steering wheel so that he could drive more easily. "There was just no other car that could match the Rolls. In the 1940s, we had about 10 of them. I know it sounds decadent but, as a child, travelling in these cars was a routine affair."

In 1913, a grand Silver Ghost was sent to His Highness the Nizam of Hyderabad, one of the richest men in the world but a notorious eccentric and miser. The handbook stated that it was a "semi-state coach". It was indeed a sort of throne car, painted in a rich canary yellow with gold mountings and upholstered in gold silk brocade with matching curtains.

This was only one of the Nizam's 50 Rolls-Royces, as befitted a man who employed 12,000 servants in his palace, including 38 to dust the chandeliers and others merely to grind walnuts. Yet he wore the same greasy fez for 30 years. On occasions when he invited people for tea, a Rolls decked out in feudal finery and with a cocktail bar in the back would go to pick them up. His fleet had barely covered 1,000 miles when he died in 1967.

Easily Rolls-Royce's favourite customer was the Maharaja of Mysore, because he always bought cars in batches of seven. According to the Rolls-Royce archives, the phrase "doing a Mysore" passed into company parlance to mean selling seven cars at once.

Another enthusiastic buyer was the Maharaja of Patiala, whose appetite for Rolls-Royces (27) was exceeded only by his appetite for women (hundreds). The cars were decorated with such vast quantities of diamonds and precious stones that during periodic overhauls, security guards had to be positioned in the garage to prevent pilferage. But then this was the man whose arrival at the Savoy in the 1930s used to cause a traffic jam in the Strand as 20 Rolls-Royces followed by five truckloads of cricket gear rolled up to the hotel entrance.

Tiger hunting was a passion with the maharajas but they did not believe in roughing it in the jungle. The royal style was carpeted tents, cases of Fortnum & Mason goodies, champagne and a battalion of cooks rustling up five-course meals in a mud kitchen. It was only natural, therefore, that Rolls-Royces became an important accessory. Specially fitted cars had extra footboards for the servants to stand on while the car rushed through the forest and special high-beam lamps to dazzle the tiger. Some were fitted with bells to fool the big cat into thinking a herd of cattle was approaching.

Baig says he believes there are now about 169 Rolls-Royces remaining in India, a few in museums - Arvind Mewar, for example, has a small museum in Udaipur - but most in the hands of private collectors. Some were sold to foreign collectors until their export was banned. Mumbai-based Pranlal Bhogilal is believed to have the largest number - about 65 in his collection of some 200 cars.

Mr Bhogilal and Mr Mewar love restoring vintage Rolls-Royces but before the 1960s, when people began to realise their value, many specimens lay around like scrap. One, in Lucknow, had its back cut off for use as a delivery truck. Another, a 1919 Phantom I, lay rotting in the Vijayanagram palace stables with a tree growing through its floorboards.

"But even after 60 years, most engines would start up effortlessly," says Mr Mewar. "Can you say that about any other car?"