OVER the years I have driven some strange and wonderful cars, but one of the most memorable has to be the astonishing Rolls-Royce Camargue.

This model represented some radical new thinking for Rolls-Royce. A two-door coupe it was launched to much media hype in 1975 and was built at the company's coachbuilding division, Mulliner Park Ward continuing to 1985

The first Rolls of the post war years not to be designed in-house, it was styled by automotive designer Paolo Martin at Pininfarina.

It had a very continental look including the famous Rolls-Royce radiator which was slightly raked forwards.

The flagship of the Rolls-Royce line-up it was the most expensive production car of its day and at £29,250 was 35 per cent more expensive than the regal Phantom VI which was much larger.

One of the main perceived markets for Camargue was the USA where it was sold for a massive $147,000.

The US price at this stage was approximately $15,000 higher than the UK price which went against the grain because in the 1970s many European models retailed for significantly less in the US than in Europe, in order to compete with prices set by aggressive mainstream US manufacturers and Japanese importers.

Rolls-Royce explained its rejection of this approach for the Carmargue by reference to the high cost of large amounts of safety and pollution engineering needed to adapt the cars that they expected to earmark for the USA during 1976.

Back in Britain the market was agape over the price. For the same money, a UK resident could buy five Jaguar XJ6s or 26 Minis. Worse was to come because rapid currency depreciation forced later price hikes for the Camargue.

As a result it was only sold in limited numbers but it was, to my mind, one of the most mind-blowing cars of all time.

Named after the solitary and unspoilt areas of southern France at the Delta of the Rhone the car did have definite French connections. The great Sir Henry Royce carried out much of his design work at his winter home, La Villa Mimosa at Le Canadel.

The Camargue was not without its intricacies. For instance the completely automatic split-level climate control system was the first of its kind and was not without its troubles. Also the first 65 cars were built with a complex SU carburettor system which was superceded with Solex units.

Power was from a standard 6,750cc V8 via a General Motors Turbo-Hydramatic three-speed automatic transmission. Easily capable of 116mph the Camargue handled beautifully, feeling much more composed on winding roads than the Silver Shadow.

It was the first Rolls-Royce to be designed to metric dimensions and during the car's production run 530 were built, as well as one specially-ordered Bentley variant.

The media launch of the car took place in Sicily and featured an interesting twist. Chief Engineer John Hollings took along a special trophy to be presented to the first motoring journalist to have an accident in a Camargue.

Rather than act as a deterrent the award tempted fate and one motoring writer had a prang with a lorry. When the news broke, three European motoring journalists claimed to have been the culprit. I only know that it was not me.