When the Roman Empire  fell, the art of coachbuilding went into decline. the craft did not come into it's own again until medieval times, although even the use of coaches was considered effete and was restricted by law; citizens were encouraged to ride horses instead. It revived, nevertheless, in the regions of present-day Germany, Holland and especially Hungary. Indeed, the word "coach" is derived from the Hungarian town of Kocs, a coachbuilding centre in medieval times.

The first British-built coach was ordered from Walter Rippon of York in 1555 by the Earl of Rutland. Rippon's first royal order was for Mary Queen of Scots the following year and Elizabeth I ordered a coach shortly afterwards, although  it is said that she preferred a Belgian made conveyance.

A number of developments occured a century later when the leaf spring was invented, making possible vehicles that were lighter and morecomfortable. About taht time, too, in 1670, the Berline was invented in Berlin. Its significance lies in the fact that if possessedtwo chassis members instead of the single central 

With the advent of the motor car in the late 19th century the ability to provide a body was already available and the skills of the coachmakers were happily paid for by automobile designers. Only later, when the art of engine and chassis design had become established, did the car makers find time to devote greater attention to bodies and find new ways of making them. Not surprisingly, therefore, the method of building bodies on early Rolls-Royce cars, and most other makes, differed little from the practice of a century earlier. 

For several decades after the development of the motor car it was the rule rather than the exception for manufacturers of the better cars to offer a chassis only and for the client to have a body built by a coachbuilder. Very often the coachbuilder ordered the chassis. 

Other motorists might have a body that they were particulary fond of transferred from one car to another. A car could even be provided with more than one body, a two seater racing style, say, and a four seater touring body. Quite often buyers of a used car might take a dislike to the original body and have a new one built. Or the vendors, who were often the manufacturers, would find a certain style of body unsaleable and have the chassis rebodied with a style more in demand. this happened often in America, for example, where records compiled by Rolls-Royce enthusiasts show that somechassis were rebodied two or three times. When saleswere sluggish, especially in the Depression, it was quite usual for limousine bodies to be taken off Silver Ghost chassis and replaced by the more attractive roadster style. 

In both Britain and the United States Rolls-Royce did much for the coachbuilding trade. Henry Royce saw little point in building a fine chassis if it 

The first fundamental change in body construction in Europe came in the mid-1920s with the Weymann body. Born in Haiti and brought up in France, Charles Terres Weymann gained considerable fame as a pioneer aviator, taking second place in the first Schneider Trophy race in 1913, before turning his attention to motor cars. He opened premises in the rue Troyon in Paris, where he sold car bodies and motoring accessories. All chassis of this period flexed and wracked even on smooth roads and Weymann sought to rectify this. 

Instead of building bodies that resisted the stresses imposed by bumpy road surfaces he evolved a method of construction that produced a body that could 'ride' with the roughness. Weymann's car bodies were framed-up in ash in the normal way, but instead of connecting the timbers by woodworkers' joints he joined them with flexible metal brackets that did not allow adjoining pieces of wood to touch. Oiled felt was usually interposed between the joint as an additional safeguard. This system did away with the creaking and groaning at the joints to which even the best traditionally built bodies were prone after a short time. And Weymann's bodies were not panelled in metal; they were covered, instead, with imitation leather-cloth or leather stretched over horsehair padding. Where double curves were required the padding was supported by expanded light-metal panels tacked to the framing. 
These bodies were silent and also very light, which helped the performance of the car. For these reasons they enjoyed a considerable vogue and licences to build them were granted to many of the great coachbuilders of the time. In Britain a Weymann Motor Body Company was formed. 

One further reason for the popularity of the Weymann type of construction was that, at a time when car production was rising fast, it overcame the problem, increasingly difficult, of finding sufficient skilled panel-beaters; and so mass-produced, imitation Weymann bodies began to appear. These suffered from most of the disadvantages of the construction methods while displaying few of the advantages. Moreover, they were built from second-class materials and if left out in the weather they quickly rotted. This brought the method undeservedly into disrepute. A valid complaint, however, concerned the surface finish of the leather-cloth or leather, which was dull. Attempts were made to counteract this by panelling the bodies up to the waistline, but they were unsuccesful because the end result was a body half-rigid and half-flexible and which inevitably developed rattles. 

Very fine Weymann bodies were built on Rolls-Royce chassis by coachbuilders such as H.J. Mulliner, Vanden Plas, Gurney Nutting and others. As far as Europe went, the next most important step in car body construction was the advent of the pressed-steel body. That development had already occured in America where individual pressed panels had been used long before the first World War and where, in 1913, Edward G. Budd had persuaded John and Horace Dodge to let him design and tool an all-pressed-steel body. Budd's other achievements included a stainless steel rail coach and the Ford Trimotor aeroplane. 

William Morris, later Lord Nuffield, introduced the pressed steel body to England in 1926 when, with the help of Budd's company and the bankers J.H. Schroeder, he founded the Pressed Steel Company in Oxford. It brought the advantage of repid production and the drawback of inflexibility which came from high volume output. Those early pressed bodies were not the unitary structures we know today. They were simply bodies of the old type ready to mount on separate chassis and they differed only in that they were made from steel pressings welded together. Exposed joints were 'joggled' and then filled with lead to give a smooth surface. They still contained a quantity of wood, mainly for door cappings and for the tacking strips to which the body interior trim was fastened. Initially the entire production of the Pressed Steel Company was reserved for morris Motors but later on the company took orders from other popular makes. 

Prior to 1939 in Europe steel bodies were reserved for the lower end of the market. Firms such as Rolls-Royce, Daimler, Lanchester and Bentley continued to patronize the traditional coachbuilders and traditional methods of coachbuilding. 

Europe took a jump ahead of the United States when Citroën in 1934 introduced the traction avant with the body and chassis in one unit. Rolls-Royce did not adopt steel construction until 1946. 

The main reason the company switched to steel then was similar to that which prompted the Dodge brothers in 1913 and William Morris in 1926 - insufficient craftsmen were available to build bodies in the required quantities. 
By moving over to pressed-steel bodywork Rolls-Royce found it necessary to accept the restrictions that the big tooling investment in a steel body places on the ability to make frequent design changes. The relatively low volume of Rolls-Royce and Bentley production meant that die costs had to be amortized over a long period. The company also had to accept the fact that a steel body, unless very well protected, enjoyed a life no longer than that of a Weymann body because of the natural tendency of steel to revert to iron oxide. In the early daysof steel-body production at Crewe the steel sheet available in postwar Britain was not always of best quality. Moreover, the designers had not fully appreciated the need to eliminate water traps and to ensure that all sill areas were fully ventilated. Many owners found that the car body decayed long before the chassis parts were anywhere near the end of their life. On the latest cars these problems have been overcome but the first 10 years of steel body production often proved troublesome for the company. 

The main reason the company switched to steel then was similar to that which prompted the Dodge brothers in 1913 and William Morris in 1926 - 

Many fine enclosed bodies were built on Rolls-Royce chassis during the Edwardian era but the majority of the bodies mounted on the early chassis were open styles with and without windscreens. The small windscreen was slow to evolve. Early ones tended to be almost the size of a small shop window. Made of glass they were heavy and unsightly. Many enclosed bodies did not have windscreens; the driver sat in the open air perhaps under the shelter of an extention of the enclosed rear compartment. The feature that most dated the cars built before the First World War was the low radiator and bonnet line. These components of early Rolls-Royce cars, up to the 

With the launch of the Phantom II, and the trend for close-coupled coachwork, the spare wheels were moved from the running boards to the back which gave the body designers greater scope for invention. The standard close coupled saloon with flared wings, devised by Ivan Evernden in conjuction with Barker, has attained classic status, as has the Park Ward coupe on the Continental chassis and Hooper's Phantom II sedanca de ville. Some very beautiful convertible bodies were put on Phantom II Continental chassis. Barker did a first class one, so did Park Ward and Gurney Nutting. When the phantom III appeared with its very high waistline the stylists handled it just as well. There were quite a number of really memorable bodies mounted on the Pahntom III chassis, and excellent work was being done on Bentleys at the same time. James Young produced a Phantom III sports saloon body that was widely copied. 

By 1945 the number of coachbuilders in Britain had shrunk dramatically. The survivers were H.J. Mulliner, Park Ward (since 1939 owned by Rolls-Royce), James Young of Bromley, and several smaller concerns. Although Rolls-Royce now made their own steel bodies, chassis only were still available and this allowed the company to reintroduce the Continental (with a Bentley radiator), a very handsome prototype saloon by Pininfarina on the Silevr Dawn chassis. Although the Phantom V chassis was intended for formal coachwork there was no reason why it could not receive owner-driver bodies, but no one seems to have responded to the challenge. The Silver Shadow, because of its unitary construction, comes now in standard bodies but for those who want something different from the standard four door saloon there is the Corniche, in open or enclosed form, and the Pinifarina-styled Camargue, the first Rolls-Royce to go into production with bodywork from this eminent Italian stylist. 

Having done so much to keep traditional coachbuilders in business between the wars it is fitting that Rolls-Royce should now own what is probably the largest custom coachbuilder in the world. This is Mulliner Park Ward, with workshops at Willesden and Harlesden in London. H.J. Mulliner had been acquired in the late 1950s and in 1961 was merged with Park Ward to form the Rolls-Royce coachbuilding division. At Mulliner Park Ward and at James Young in Bromley (still active as coachwork restorers) one can see old-fashioned craftsmanship being used to frame up bodies (in well seasoned ash until recently) and panel beaters forming the panels from sheets of aluminium to skin the body. 

One essentially British speciality is the use of walnut veneers on instrument panels and door cappings. Veneered instrument panels are a feature of every Rolls-Royce car be it steel bodied or custom made and they are manufactured by the old process of cutting and glueing the veneers onto a stable wooden base, staining them selectively to bring out the best of the grain, and then finishing them with many coats of varnish. It is a measure of Rolls-Royce thoroughness that a sample of the veneer from every car is carefully filed for future reference. 

Coach painting has undergone many changes since the days when oil based paints and varnishes were applied by brush. As many as 20 coats were applied, with hand flatting between in top quality work. Final varnishing was a highly particular skill. It could only be done when the weather conditions were right and then only the best man in the shop was entrusted with the task. 

During the enormous expansion of production in the 1920s the Americans had to find an alternative to multiple coats and brush painting because of the shortage of workmen skilled in the job. Cellulose provided the answer, but effectively only from 1926 and the invention of the spray gun. From then on cellulose was used for all except very special work until the introduction of special paints, such as acrylics,and low bake ovens came into use after 1945.