Tale of Rolls-Royce a complex one
Through partnership, war, ruin and rebirth, brand has remained closely linked with luxury
Rolls-Royce began in 1904 as a partnership of two men determined to build the best car in the market, creating what’s possibly the world’s best-known luxury brand. Almost a century later, the company would also go through one of the strangest custody battles the industry had ever seen.
Charles Rolls and Henry Royce were both fascinated by automobiles. Rolls had a dealership that sold the French-built Panhard, which mostly financed his hobby of car racing, but he thought Britain should have a high-quality car of its own. Royce, an engineer, owned a company that made electric motors.
Royce bought a car but wasn’t happy with its quality, and using it as a pattern, he built a much better one. He went on to make two more, one of which went to his company director. The director showed it to a friend who happened to work for Charles Rolls, and who introduced Rolls to Royce.
Rolls was impressed with both the car and with Royce, and the two agreed to a partnership. In December 1904, the first Rolls-Royce models were publicly displayed at an auto show in Paris. Covering all bases, the company initially offered two-, three-, four- and six-cylinder engines, along with an unsuccessful V8. Ultimately, for 1906, it pared everything down to a single six-cylinder model, named the 40/50 HP for its 48-horsepower engine.
Charles Rolls successfully raced versions of the car, and in 1907, one was painted silver, with silver-plated trim, and entered in an endurance run from London to Edinburgh. It became known as the Silver Ghost, and the name was given to all of the subsequent production models.
Based on its success in reliability trials — at a time when most cars weren’t all that reliable — RollsRoyce established itself as a premier luxury automaker.
But Rolls didn’t have much time to enjoy his company’s triumph. Fascinated with innovation, he’d already taken hundreds of hot-air balloon rides when he met the Wright Brothers. After they took him up in a plane, he bought one. True to form, he was determined to be the fastest in the air and set several world records. But his plane’s tail snapped at an air show in 1910 and it plunged to the ground, giving Rolls the dubious distinction of being the first Briton killed in a plane crash.
Somewhat ironically, the company would open an aircraft engine division, after it was tapped by the British government to produce supplies during the First World War. The subsidiary would also be the catalyst for that eventual custody dispute.
Henry Royce continued to run the company, even after declining health forced him to stay home.
He sent daily instructions for engineering, with the factory returning the results to his house for approval, almost up until his death in 1933.
The company was all about handbuilt exclusivity, and wouldn’t make its 100,000th car until 1985.
The final piece of Rolls-Royce’s unique identity, the hood ornament, arrived in 1911. John Montagu, an auto magazine publisher who had been a friend of Charles Rolls, commissioned his illustrator Charles Sykes to produce a mascot. Sykes based it on Eleanor Thornton, who was Montagu’s secretary and possibly his mistress. Officially called the Spirit of Ecstasy, it’s commonly known as the “flying lady,” but rather than wings, she’s actually holding up her flowing sleeves.
To avoid import duties on American sales, Rolls-Royce opened a plant in Springfield, Mass., in 1921, producing 2,944 cars before it closed in 1931, when luxury-car sales fell following the Depression.
Back in Britain that same year, the company bought the struggling automaker Bentley to offer sportier luxury models.
In the 1960s, Rolls-Royce poured cash into its aircraft division to produce a new engine for Lockheed and was then hit with huge losses from global exchange rates.
The company went bankrupt and was saved by the British government in 1971, which sold it to Vickers, an engineering and manufacturing company, in 1980.
Vickers put the car division up for sale in 1998. BMW supplied engines to Vickers, and thought its $550 million bid would take it. Instead, Volkswagen made a surprising bid of $900 million, which Vickers had to accept for its shareholders. But the company’s interwoven structure wasn’t so easily divided.
The factory in Crewe, England, the car itself, and the “flying lady” went to Volkswagen, while the now-independent aircraft division got the Rolls-Royce name and logo, which it licensed to its supplier BMW. Neither Volkswagen nor Rolls-Royce could build the whole thing.
It took 10 months of negotiation, but in the end Volkswagen got the name for five years to build the cars, providing it bought the engines from BMW. In 2003 they parted ways.
Volkswagen kept Bentley, which it still produces in Crewe, while BMW built a new facility in Goodwood to make the Rolls-Royce.
The autos-and-aircraft separation has been in the news recently, with reports that Rolls-Royce PLC, the aircraft division, has settled a $1.1-billion suit over allegations of corruption and bribery.
Rolls-Royce the automaker has gone on high alert, even taking to Twitter to confirm it’s not related.
It might have been founded on a partnership, but it’s now all about standing alone.