A pool of men in the service bay, half of them wearing pin-stripe suits, pored over the car.

A woman in a black silk dress with a red stripe across the waist marched briskly into the corridor marked “Parts Dept.” at a luxury British auto dealership on Ventura Boulevard in Encino.

A harassed-looking young man met her at the door of a small, bustling office.

“Is my strip in?” she asked.

“It’s really on the way,” he said, smiling weakly.

“There was a little hesitation when you said ‘really,’ ” she said stiffly.

He said maybe one more week.

She then unburdened her frustration on a reporter who happened to be standing beside her. The strip was for her Jaguar, she said. The original tarnished, so she ordered a new one from Britain. First the wrong one came. The second one was supposed to be in transit. It had been four weeks.

“It’s the price you pay for not owning a Buick,” she confided.

The reporter was stationed there Monday to observe an unusual ritual this week in which about a hundred owners of British luxury cars are paying a small part of the price for not owning a Buick.

Rolls-Royce Motors has sent a team from its American headquarters in Lyndhurst, N.J., to make certain that the Rolls-Royces of the Valley are everything their owners think a $100,000 car should be.

By appointment, but at no charge, they are doing top-to-bottom checkouts on any Rolls-Royce brought into Terry York Motor Car Ltd.

The idea, said Cal West, manager of product support for the company, is that the typical Rolls owner wants the car in perfect condition but doesn’t always recognize those subtle signs of deterioration that, he acknowledged with a sober drop of the brow, even show up in a Rolls.

“When things slowly start changing, it’s like getting old,” West said. “You don’t necessarily notice it.”

Throughout the afternoon, Rolls owners drove up in cars bearing license plates such as “WHLSALE,” “CASHBOX” and “4MYMOM.”

The owners went to the showroom where Vic Marasco, general manager of the dealership, met them.

Marasco led each new arrival to a table handsomely laid out with dishes of diced cheeses and fruits and an ice bucket containing an Augey Bordeaux, 1983, a Domaine de Bonneterre, 1979, and a Wente Brothers gray Riesling, 1982.

As each owner sipped and nibbled, West, a sedate figure in a navy pin-stripe suit and trimmed black beard, strolled over to begin a conversation.

“We want to know their opinions on the car, what they would like to see in future models, what pleases them, what they don’t like,” he said.

Meanwhile, a pool of men in the service bay, half of them also wearing pin-stripe suits, pored over the car.

At one point they worked on a 1976 silver Silver Cloud with the license plate, “BOR STL.” It belonged to Jane Borrmann, widow of the owner of Borrmann Steel of Burbank.

In a recitativo dialogue, service engineer Vincent Corizzi interrogated the crew and wrote their answers on a clipboard.

“Air hoses?” Corizzi asked.

“Air hoses worn,” a man in a white coat responded.

“Trans level?”

“OK.”

Corizzi slammed a door. It seated with an echo.

He reopened it and ran his finger along the weatherstripping.

“Window seal cracked,” he said.

Corizzi then drove the car for 15 minutes along the mansion-lined streets of the Encino hills. He made more notes when a dashboard light went on and a rumble became perceptible under heavy acceleration.

A few minutes later, another young man from the service department huddled with Borrmann and her friend and automotive adviser Mark Celli.

He started down the list of problems, attempting to explain in layman’s terms why her accumulator and her Detroit pots were going bad.

“Didn’t you just do that?” Borrmann snapped.

The service man thumbed through a stack of pink papers, assuring her that was something else.

“What is the overall price to fix all that?” she asked. “If I’m going to have to pay for all that, I might as well buy a new car.”

In a momentary pique she pointed to the wine on the table.

“I don’t like the vintages either,” she said. “If Cutter was still the owner, he’d have better vintages than that.”

The serviceman smiled apologetically, and in only a moment Borrmann came around. She wanted to know how long it would take.

“I’m going to the coronation ball, or whatever it’s called,” she said. “Every time we go to one of those balls in the Mercedes, it’s too squeezed for the ladies getting into the seats in their evening gowns, so we always take the Rolls.”

The serviceman guessed two or three days and about $2,000.

“Nothing major,” he said.

“Oh, God, take it,” Borrmann said, marching off with Celli.

By that time, Linda Haines, a flaming redhead in blue jeans and a pink sweater, had pulled up and stepped out of her brown convertible Corniche.

Taking the serviceman in tow, she began to complain to him about some body work she had recently had done. She pointed out the crease of the door. One metal edge was one-sixteenth inch higher than the adjoining one.

The serviceman offered the name of a man who, he promised, would strip every inch of paint and remove every piece of trim to make the job perfect.

“That’s what I want,” she said. “I suppose I’ll have to leave it there a month.”

The serviceman nodded.

“If he can’t do it right, he doesn’t want to take the job,” he said.

Quite right.