Each year, Wisconsin-based hot-rodders Ringbrothers bring a slew of modified American metal to the SEMA show, but for 2023 they cooked up something different. The custom car builder pulled the covers off “Paramount” yesterday, a gleaming 1961 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II with an American heart. Unlike some of the company’s other creations, Paramount keeps a traditional look. While the original bodywork was stripped to the bare metal to remove any imperfections before being repainted a pristine shade of white, the design was left mostly untouched. “They’re iconic and you don’t have to change things just to change it,” co-founder Mike Ring told Car and Driver. Plus, Ring said, the buyer who commissioned Paramount was already in love with the swooping, elegant styling.
Things are different, however, under the skin. While the V-8 engine is still a 6.2-liter unit—like the original Rolls-Royce powertrain—it is now a General Motors–sourced supercharged LT4 pumping out 640 horsepower and 635 pound-feet of torque. This beefy motor is hooked up to a Bowler Tru-Street 10-speed automatic gearbox and a carbon-fiber driveshaft. The decision to stick an American motor into this British behemoth was easy. “We know people in GM,” Mike Ring said. If any issues arise, help is just a phone call away.
Jim Ring, Mike’s brother and co-founder of the company, attested to Paramount’s performance credentials. “When you see this car go down the road, you think to yourself, this thing shouldn’t be doing what it’s doing,” he said. They drag-raced it against the customer’s new Phantom, and it wasn’t even close. “It just squats and launches.”
The Rolls-Royce weighs about 4800 pounds, and the body rests on a custom chassis with Fox RS SV coil-overs at all four corners. The 18-inch EVOD Industries wheels are shod in Falken Azenis tires and, like on modern Rolls-Royces, the gyro wheel center caps keep the logo facing right side up as the car moves.
Inside, the wooden dashboard keeps the original layout but gains modern looking gauges and machined billet switchgear. Ringbrothers also fitted a “starlight” headliner, a popular option seen on modern Rolls-Royces, and the aftermarket version has over 1000 LED lights hand-sewn into the ceiling. Ringbrothers also freed up more space inside. The original Silver Cloud featured a glass divider at the B-pillar, separating the chauffeur from the passengers.
“There was no room,” Mike Ring explained. “You had to be a jockey to drive it.” To give the owner more space, Ringbrothers ditched the divider, allowing the front bench seat—which came out of a 1957 Chevrolet—to be shifted rearwards. But the modifiers didn’t forget about the rear passengers, refitting the fold-down tables onto the Chevy-sourced seat’s back. If you bleed red, white, and blue, don’t worry, because Ringbrothers still brought two American builds to this year’s show. This resplendent burgundy ’65 Mustang convertible is nicknamed “Uncaged,” a follow up to the “Caged” Mustang that Ringbrothers created last year. Unlike the Rolls, which retained the original body, the only original part on Uncaged are the wheel center caps.
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