Rolls-Royce

It was midnight, the witching hour, when spirits are said to be abroad.
The great car wafted down the mile-long tunnel that the massive twin
headlamps bored for it through the blackness. Little hamlets came up
and were gone a blink later; they slept on, blissfully unaware that
history had just passed. Apart from the brief illumination of the lights,
only the barest suggestion of a whisper and the swirling turbulence of
its wake betrayed the car’s wraithlike passage.

Inside, the passengers dozed, cocooned in the soporific luxury of deep,

soft, hand-tooled leather seats. The hypnotic ticking of the dashboard
clock was the only sound to be heard in the sepulchral silence of the
interior.

Silhouetted in the glare beyond the lamps, the little seraph on the
verge of flight stood poised in eternal ecstasy on the gleaming
radiator. The giant touring car effortlessly consumed the night…silent,
a phantasm. A hundred miles of road vanished beneath its wheels
every hour as it hurtled towards motoring history.

Who can say that men did not dream this dream? For a motorcar was
created that brought this vision to fruition, proof that before things
appear on the material plane, they first come into existence in a
phantom zone of thought, of ideas, lying deep within the uncharted
territory of the subconscious mind. All things are fundamentally mind-
stuff, denizens of a spirit world turned into reality by conscious will.

An unlikely partnership between Charles Rolls and Henry Royce

resulted in a car that redefined quality and made Rolls-Royce an
enduring symbol of man’s urge towards perfection. Superficially poles
apart, the two men were united in their fanatical zeal to build the ‘best
car in the world’.

The logo of Rolls-Royce – two entwined R’s – and the famous ‘Spirit of
Ecstasy’ mascot on the radiator – are instantly recognisable symbols of
the unsurpassable quality of Rolls-Royce products—a reputation that
has stood the test of time.

The two men who conjured up this phantom from the fifth dimension,
this palpable dream-come-true, first met in 1904. In retrospect, one
could almost say that they were incomplete halves of a whole, fated to
meet when the time was ripe.
 Charles Rolls (left) and
Henry Royce
They were, superficially, a
study in contrasts,
products of very different
backgrounds. The Hon’ble
Charles Stewart Rolls
(1877 – 1910) was born to
affluence in the upper
crust of Edwardian
England. The third son of
Lord and Lady
Llangattock, educated at
Eton and Cambridge, he
was meant to live the life
of ease and sophistication
reserved for those of noble birth.

Frederick Henry Royce (1863 – 1933) came from the working class, the
son of a humble miller from Alwalton. No silver spoon graced his mouth
at birth; at the age of ten he was selling newspapers, and then joined
duty as a railway apprentice in Peterborough. Determined, even at that
tender age, to make something of himself, he learnt the basics of
engineering, algebra, electrical theory and practice, and some foreign
languages.

Rolls had a technical streak in him, too. He graduated with Mechanical

Engineering and Applied Sciences from Cambridge. The nascent
motorcar industry having captured his fancy, he bought a French 3¾
horsepower Peugeot while on a trip abroad with his father. It was the
first car Cambridge had ever seen.

Rolls entered and won several motoring competitions, notable among

his early triumphs being the 1,000-mile reliability trial sponsored by Sir
Alfred Harmsworth. A gold medal was specially struck to commemorate
his convincing win. At this time, he was probably the foremost racing
car driver in England. An enthusiastic aviator, he was the first man in
history to make a non-stop return air-crossing of the English Channel.

Like Charles Rolls, Henry Royce also received a fine education. Life
herself taught Henry Royce. The alma mater of this self-made man was
the University of Adversity. His ambition took him from a 55 pence-per-
week job to a better one with a firm in London dealing in electric
lighting.
He then went into business making electrical light fittings, cranes and
dynamos (in partnership with one A.E. Claremont). Barely in his early
twenties, the turn of the century saw him well established in business,
with an expanding order book.

ROOLS-ROYCE Corniche (above)

At an age when the sons of the wealthy classes were settling down to a
life of ease and frivolity, Royce was already a seasoned manufacturer.

It is not generally realized that the similarities between the two men
outweighed their dissimilarities. Both had a passion for quality,
directed forcefully towards motorcars. Rolls had gone into business,
after college, as a distributor of fine cars he personally selected. His
formidable racing and practical repairing skills set him apart from the
average motor enthusiast.

He nursed one major ambition: to promote a car of English make that

was as good as, or better than, the foreign marques he dealt in. Rolls
was totally dissatisfied with the prevailing quality and reliability of
English cars. British manufacturers, to him, were pig-headedly insular
in their resistance to Continental innovations.

Claude Johnson (irreverently known as ‘the hyphen in Rolls-Royce’) had

joined him as partner of C.S. Rolls and Company. Johnson’s marketing
skills were largely responsible for the rapid and profitable growth (that
Rolls never lived to see after his premature death in a flying accident)
of the company, counterbalancing Royce’s preoccupation with
production matters. Two men, Rolls and Royce, who had made the
most of their bloodlines: skilled, determined, purposeful, and
possessed by a (common) vision! Destiny had set the stage; now Time
waited to take his cue.

A shareholder called Henry Edmunds urged Rolls to meet Henry Royce

and see his twin-cylinder car. But Rolls was understandably reluctant
to make the effort. He was unaware that Royce had once bought a
French Decauville, but piqued by its starting, overheating, vibration,
and other problems, had determined to manufacture a car on his own.
Three prototypes rolled out, and turned in quite satisfactory
performance.

The historic meeting finally took place at the Midland Hotel in

Manchester, on 4th May 1904. Rolls was impressed with the ease of
starting and over-all dependability of Royce’s maiden effort. He wrote
afterwards that Royce "was the man I have been looking for for years”.

An agreement was inked that gave Rolls the exclusive rights to

distribute the products of the Royce works, which then were a 10 HP
car, a 10 HP engine with chassis, a 15 HP engine - chassis, a 20 HP car
and a 30 HP 6-cylinder engine.

Exhibited at the Paris Salon in early December 1904, the cars caused
quite a stir. Their mutual confidence in each other confirmed, a
contract was signed that, inter alia, specified that the products would
henceforth be branded as ‘Rolls-Royce’. The legend had been born.

On 12th July 1910, Charles Stewart Rolls died in a tragic flying accident
at Bournemouth, the first British pilot to thus perish. Royce soldiered
on at the head of the company, right up to his death on 22nd April
1933. He had succeeded in imprinting his unique personality and
quality criteria forever on Rolls-Royce.

Once, Royce was on a routine inspection round in the factory, and he

happened to ask a worker about the part he was fitting. “Oh, it’ll do”,
was the casual reply. Stung, Royce immediately asked the man to
collect his wages and leave the firm. The stunned worker asked what
his mistake was. “Wrong attitude for Rolls-Royce, son,” said Royce
softly. “You see, ‘It’ll do’ won’t do for the best car in the world. When a
component goes into a Rolls-Royce, it has to be the best Man can
make.”
The ‘Silver Ghost’ (left; 1907-1925) was the car that shot the
newborn company to widespread fame and fortune. Originally only
called the 40/50 HP, in the prosaic manner of manufacturers, it was
Claude Johnson who unwittingly made a place for himself in Rolls-
Royce history by so referring to his personal aluminium-paint finished
machine. The name stuck.

Only four Silver Ghosts could be turned out every week, even when, in
1907, the new Nightingale Road, Derby, works commenced production.

In a half-century of great cars that included the likes of Armstrong-

Siddeley, Mercedes-Benz, Bugatti, Duesenberg, Hispano Suiza, Isotta
Fraschini, Maybach Zeppelin and Panhard Levassor, the Rolls-Royce
reigned supreme, the embodiment of luxury, refinement and
reliability…the ultimate status symbol.
With its six-cylinder, 7,428 cc (1909) engine, pressed steel chassis with
tubular cross-members, four forward speeds, and an 84 mile-per-hour
top speed, it outclassed many other famous makes to take the 1913
Alpine Rally, a grueling test of skill and endurance. With the outbreak
of World War I, Rolls-Royce adapted to fall in demand by supplying the
Silver Ghost with four tons of armour.
After the war, having seen action even in the unforgiving terrain of the
North African desert, they returned to London roads. Coachwork having
replaced armour, the old ladies sallied forth gallantly, none the worse
for an experience that had destroyed lesser cars!

Fully 6,173 examples of this wondrous motorcar were built between

1906 and 1925. The rich and powerful of the world insisted on owning
it, for they saw in it an extension of themselves. The Silver Ghost
epitomised splendour and superlative performance—the very pinnacle
of perfection. More than any car in history, it enshrined an ideal. The
‘Spirit of Ecstasy’ summed it all up, the most revered and
recognisable of all car mascots.

The ‘Spirit of Ecstasy’

The Silver Ghost continues to haunt us, reincarnated time and again
for nearly a century. Some of these avatars were the Rolls-Royce
Phantom I [1925-1929 (Derby) and (1926-1931 (Springfield); the
Phantom II: (1929-1935); the Phantom III (1936-1939); the Silver
Wraith (1947-1959); the Silver Dawn (1949-1955); the Phantom IV
(1950-1956); the Silver Cloud III (1962-1966); the Phantom V (1959-
1968); the Phantom VI (1968-1991); the Silver Shadow II (1977-
1980); the Silver Spirit III (1994-1996); the Silver Seraph
(introduced 1998), and the Rolls-Royce (New) Corniche (introduced
January 2000).

The Bentleys – from a second line of cars tracing their lineage to

Walter Owen Bentley’s justly famous company, which Rolls-Royce
bought in 1936 – grew progressively like their elder cousins. Sportier,
but with Rolls-Royce engineering and other inputs, the marque is
prominent in endurance racing such as the grueling Le Mans 24-hour
race.

And thus the Rolls-Royce, ultimate symbol of Man’s refusal to

compromise on quality, moved majestically from history…into legend.
Every time one of these definitive statements of workmanship from a
bygone era whispers past, proudly displaying the entwined R’s and the
‘Spirit of Ecstasy’ on the radiator, it serves to remind us of the words of
Henry Royce: "Whatsoever is rightly done, however humble, is noble".

It matters little if Rolls-Royce has changed hands; as long as the new

men at the wheel dream the same dreams as Rolls and Royce, as long
as they continue to hear the muted flutter of the same spectral wings,
the legend will never die.