Top marque with an image built to last

Rolls-Royce has been a household name in luxury motoring for over 100 years. David Behrens explores its successful history.

AFTER MORE than a century, it remains the premier name in luxury motoring, and these pictures from the early and mid20th century are evidence of the craftsmanship that went into each hand-built Rolls-Royce.

Most were taken at the vast plant in Crewe, Cheshire, where car production moved after the war, so that the firm’s headquarters at Derby could concentrate on making aero engines – an arm of the business set up at the beginning of the First World War.

Rolls-Royce had built its main site on a 12-acre plot in 1908 after accepting an offer of cheap electricity from Derby Council. But for that, it could have been a Yorkshire concern, with a site in Bradford apparently on a shortlist of five. As it was, the new factory, designed by Henry Royce himself, became a fixture on the East Midlands landscape and remains to this day – albeit in reduced form – as a centre for jet engine production.

Royce had built his first car in 1904, the same year he met his partner-to-be, Charles Rolls, who ran an upmarket car dealership in London.

In one picture, Rolls himself can be seen on the back seat of the 1905, 20hp model bearing his name, which was runnerup in that year’s International Tourist Trophy race on the Isle of Man.

The following year, the new six-cylinder Silver Ghost was named best car in the world. Relaunched 10 years ago as the Rolls Royce Ghost, it remains part of the line-up today.

But despite the historic location of the current production line at the Goodwood motor racing circuit in West Sussex, the marque is not the British icon it once was.

The car division is now a subsidiary of BMW, while Bentley, which Rolls-Royce acquired in the 1930s is now owned by another German car maker, Volkswagen.

PICTURE: GETTY IMAGES CRAFTSMANSHIP: A Silver Dawn on the assembly line at the Rolls-Royce works in Crewe, Cheshire, in April 1950.

PICTURE: GETTY IMAGES BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD: The design centre at Rolls-Royce cars, with designers poring over their drawing boards in December 1948.

PICTURES: GETTY IMAGES POWERING ON: From top, a 20-horsepower Rolls-Royce, which was runner-up in a 1905 International Tourist Trophy (TT) race in the Isle of Man – seated in the back seat is company co-founder Charles Stewart Rolls; a chauffeur tinkers with the engine of a Rolls-Royce, circa 1940.

PICTURES: GETTY IMAGES PREMIER MARQUE: From top, the Spirit of Ecstasy, the famous bonnet ornament sculpture on a Rolls-Royce cars, also known as the Silver Lady, the figure was designed by Charles Robinson Sykes; a man at work in a spray booth in the paint shop at the Rolls-Royce factory in Crewe in April 1950; men at work in the trimming shop in the Rolls-Royce factory in Crewe.