A 1982 Rolls-Royce Silver Spur owned by the late songwriter Les Reed OBE is for sale with H&H Classics on October 16th at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

This beautiful car was last serviced in 2013 and has done nominal mileage since. It is offered with its original service book and handbook from the Estate of Les Reed who died in April this year aged 83.

Les Reed OBE was an English songwriter, producer, arranger, musical director and orchestra leader.

Les Reed with Irish singer Rose-Marie

His first hit as a songwriter, was “Tell Me When” by The Applejacks, very quickly followed by “It’s Not Unusual”; “Delilah”; “I’m Coming Home and “Daughter of Darkness” for Tom Jones. “The Last Waltz; “Les Bicyclettes de Belsize”; “Love is All” were all big hits for Engelbert Humperdinck.

“There’s a Kind of Hush” was recorded by Herman’s Hermits; Johnny Mathis; Barry Manilow and The Carpenters. Les also had songs recorded by Elvis Presley; Connie Francis; Bing Crosby; Sammy Davis Jnr., Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and the Supremes, amongst many others.

During his career, Les wrote and recorded many film scores, including the 1960’s cult movie, “Girl on a Motorcycle”, starring Marianne Faithful and Alain Delon. He wrote stage musicals which were performed around the United Kingdom. “Beautiful and Damned”, based on the lives of F.Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, had a successful 16 week run at the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue.

He also performed many concerts and recorded many albums with his own orchestra, The Les Reed Orchestra. It was during this period that Les purchased his first Rolls Royce and his personalised number plate, LRO 35 (Les Reed Orchestra and the year of his birth).

Les was awarded many Gold Discs and Ivor Novello Awards during his very successful career. He was also made a Freeman of the City of London and awarded an OBE for his services to music.

Styled in-house by Austrian-born Fritz Feller, the long wheelbase Rolls-Royce Silver Spur had somewhat less fussy lines than its Silver Wraith II predecessor. Introduced in 1980, its greater road presence masked a larger glass area. So while it looked suitably massive from the outside, internally it proved pleasantly airy.

Although, based on the Silver Shadow-series floorpan, the Spur offered considerable improvements in both comfort and handling thanks to its new Girling automatic ride height control and gas shock absorbers. Copious amounts of sound deadening combined with the finest quality upholstery kept intrusion from the 6.75 litre V8 engine and three-speed automatic transmission to a muted hush unless the model's full 120mph potential was explored. Driver inputs were minimised with power assisted steering and disc brakes. Just 6,238 Silver Spurs were sold worldwide before the Spur II version was launched in 1989.