The Evolution of Rolls Royce — Britain’s Most Famous Luxury Car Brand
Rolls Royce is a famous British luxury automobile manufacturer of some of the world’s most renowned luxurious and costly vehicles. Customers highly desire Rolls Royce automobiles for their use of quality materials and workmanship. Still, the beginnings of this brand can be traced back to 1884 when Henry Royce, an engineer, founded a small electrical and mechanical business.
Henry Royce met businessman and car salesman Charles Rolls in 1904. Rolls’ admiration of the Royce 10, a car with two cylinders built by Henry Royce, led the two into an agreement that stated that Royce would manufacture cars and that Rolls had the exclusive right to sales of the vehicles. The first car of this partnership, the two-cylinder Rolls-Royce 10, was introduced at the end of that same year at Paris Salon. Its design was such that the company only sold the chassis and the engine, and the customers bought the coach from a separate supplier. The car was successful, and the two men came together to create a Rolls-Royce company in Britain.
Right off the bat, they set out to develop the ‘best car in the world.’ The result was the Silver Ghost, which they launched in 1906. The vehicle had silver fittings, a grey color scheme, a four-passenger chassis, and a six-cylinder engine with 40 horsepower. Critics declared it the best car in the world in 1907 after breaking the record for a non-stop motor run from London to Glasgow 27 times that covered 14,371 miles. No other automobile during this period had the capacity for that, so the Silver Ghost became the most desirable luxury car of that period. It remained in production until 1924.
With the dawn of the first world war, Royce turned to make aircraft engines. He named his first design ‘The Eagle,’ which powered the first-ever transatlantic flight and contributed about half the horsepower the allied forces used. The war’s end also saw the company testing a new engine type; the R engine. This engine powered the British entry to the International Schneider Trophy Seaplane contest and, in 1931, created a new world record for airspeed at 400 miles per hour. The R engine also gave engineers in the second world war the blueprint to develop the Merlin, an engine that Royce failed to finish before his death in 1933. Within this period, the Rolls Royce company also completed a successful acquisition of the Bentley brand and opened a new manufacturing facility in America.
After the war, the company developed a new car, the Phantom I. It was a sedan with four doors, a 7.7-liter engine, three or four-speed manual gears, and a top speed of 8.7 miles per hour. It was launched in 1924, followed by the 16EX in 1928 and the Phantom II continental in 1934. The Phantom III was the first car built in the 1930s with a V12 engine due to advancements in automation. Rolls Royce followed it up with the 1946 Silver Wraith, a heavy, custom-bodied car with a 4887 cc engine and an extended wheelbase. Engineers improved this design in later versions, such as the 1959 Silver Dawn and the 1965 Silver Shadow.
Vickers PLC acquired the company in 1980, and they followed it with the release of the 1981 Silver Spirit. However, rough financial bumps colored the 1980s and the 1990’s, and in 2003, the Rolls Royce and Bentley brands separated. That year, Rolls Royce released another Phantom car design and, subsequently, the 2003 Ghost and the ongoing second generation of Phantoms, which began production in 2012
