ALMOST SINCE THE DAWN OF THE AUTOMOBILE AGE, IT HAS BEEN THE MOST FAMOUS CAR IN THE WORLD.
ITS OWNERS HAVE RANGED FROM MAE WEST TO FASCIST DICTATOR BENITO MUSSOLINI TO QUEEN ELIZABETH II TO V.I. LENIN, FOUNDER OF THE SOVIET STATE, TO CHINESE LEADER MAO TSE-TUNG. IT IS THE ULTIMATE STATUS SYMBOL IN MOTORING, THE OBJECT THAT SAYS YOU ARE FILTHY RICH AND WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW IT, AND MOST RECENTLY IT HAS BECOME THE ESSENTIAL JEWEL IN THE AUTOMOTIVE STABLE OF EVERY RUSSIAN MOBSTER WORTHY OF THE NAME.
It is, of course, that supreme embodiment of German national pride, the Rolls-Royce.
German? Well, perhaps not quite. Though the Rolls-Royce Motor Car Co. has been sold to Volkswagen AG, it isn’t as though mechanics in overalls from Lower Saxony will march into the Rolls factory here, or the factory will be shipped off to Wolfsburg.
Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars will continue to flow off a British production line as they have throughout their history. The proud, magnificently trained craftsmen and women who produce them will still be British to the core. The Rolls will not be renamed Rollswagen. It will be about as German as fish and chips or Savile Row suits.
So the news of the sale has not been followed by the Union Jack being lowered to half staff in mourning. British pride has been dented, perhaps, but it is intact.
The sale of Rolls-Royce is widely seen in Britain not as a symbol of national decline–as undoubtedly would have been the case pre-Margaret Thatcher, when the economy was sagging–but as an inevitable consequence of globalization.
Sir Jimmy Saville, a working-class stiff who rose to become a leading television personality and Rolls-Royce owner, summed it up neatly: “Business belongs to the world these days. You got the brains, you got the bread, you get the ball.”
Still, while most Britons are being philosophical about the loss of this national institution to the Germans, Rolls-Royce was the last major British carmaker in British ownership. Jaguar went long ago to Ford, Vauxhall to General Motors and Rover to BMW. But Rolls-Royce is another matter, and a few people are taking it badly.
A London barrister, Michael Shrimpton, led a battle to keep Rolls-Royce British. But his credibility took a beating when it turned out his claims of financial backing came from Switzerland, Japan, the Bahamas and the Middle East.
A few months ago, when news of the proposed sale emerged, Rolls-Royce Chief Executive Graham Morris received three or four archly indignant letters, all to the effect that “if you sell Rolls-Royce to the Germans, then take us off your mailing list.”
One or two more Rolls enthusiasts told him it would be better to close the factory and leave it as a memorial to all that was best about Britain than sell it to the Germans.
Morris’ reply to those last correspondents was to suggest they come to Crewe and make their proposal to the 2,500 people who work for Rolls-Royce and see how well it would go over.
On the factory floor, the mood is not mournful, and is more than resigned.
“My heart says one thing, but me wallet says another,” said John Spragg, 48, a 25-year veteran of Rolls-Royce. “We need to be part of a big motoring organization, and I’m very pleased it’s a German motor manufacturer. There will be massive opportunities in Crewe for employment now. It is an exciting time.”
Throughout the Rolls-Royce plant, there is an unusual elan among the work force, born of pride in working for such a prestigious firm. “You don’t start with Rolls-Royce in your blood, but somehow it gets there,” said Nigel Stoddard, another 25-year veteran.
In a world in which high technology has transformed the automobile and plenty of manufacturers produce high-quality, gadget-laden cars with plush, comfortable interiors and excellent performance, the Rolls-Royce remains nearly every car owner’s dream.
Morris, the Rolls CEO, says this can be explained by a combination of emotional and rational considerations.
“Why will some people spend a fortune on a particular Swiss watch if all they want to know is the time?” he said. “They do it because it makes a statement. When they buy a Rolls-Royce, they are saying they have earned the right to drive one and are not ashamed to show it. Most of the buyers are self-made people.
“The rational argument concerns styling and content. The Rolls-Royce is a product of craft skills that do not exist in any other car company in the world. And we can tailor a car to exactly what you want. We have a unique relationship with our customers that sheer volume prevents other manufacturers from having.
“When you buy a Rolls-Royce, you are buying into a very exclusive club. There are very few bad cars in the world today. But you are either part of the Chevy club or the Rolls-Royce club. There is nothing wrong with a Chevrolet, but it doesn’t have the exclusivity and craft skills that go into a Rolls-Royce.”
Rolls-Royce research shows that the average Rolls owner has six other cars. Some owners are Rolls collectors. An Indian guru with 90 may hold the record.
The company likes to boast that 65 percent of the Rolls-Royces built are still on the road. The most famous is one the company owns, the 1907 Silver Ghost, which in that year set a world endurance record of 15,000 miles in almost non-stop driving over five weeks. All of its metal parts are silver-plated, and its value is estimated variously at $10 million to $25 million.
Though the Rolls-Royce plant has the latest in technology, after a recent $65 million overhaul, the Rolls and the Bentley still are essentially handmade.
“We take 15 times more man hours to produce our car than do most manufacturers,” said Morris.
Throughout its 94-year history, Rolls-Royce has built just under 127,000 cars, including Bentleys. General Motors produces that many every three or four days. Last year the company sold 1,918 and its peak year was 1978 when it sold 3,347.
The craftsmanship and high-quality materials that go into a Rolls-Royce and Bentley put them in a price bracket that allows company executives to say they are not competing with other cars for a customer’s money but rather with private planes, Old Masters paintings, second homes and yachts.
The Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph, which came out in December and is the first new model in 18 years, retails for (British pound) 155,000 ($258,000). The Bentley version, the Arnage, sells for (British pound) 145,000 ($240,000). With armor plating, which some customers require, and other extras, prices can double.
Some limited-production two-door Bentleys, designed for those who like a faster and more sporty car, go for $390,000.
By comparison, a top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benz sells for about $165,000 and a Cadillac for $40,000.
Any number of features go into making a Rolls-Royce special. For example, the dashboard and other interior surfaces of most Rolls-Royces are adorned with a highly polished burr walnut grown only in California, and each dashboard has a distinctive pattern with a mirror-image effect on the left and right sides.
If the wood is damaged, it can be replaced in exactly the same pattern from reserves Rolls-Royce keeps for each owner.
The burr walnut is the choice of most owners, but dashboards in oak, elm, teak and bird’s eye maple also are available.
The seats are covered in fine cowhide leather that comes from Scandinavia, where the absence of barbed-wire fences ensures quality. A deep pile lamb’s wool carpeting is used on the floors.
In its body shop, Rolls has installed robots. But of 6,500 spot welds required on the body shell, 10 are done by robots and the rest by hand. The company says the new shell is 65 percent stiffer than the old one bought from a supplier that used only robots.
As Morris suggested, buyers are encouraged to come to Crewe and order a car. If a buyer wants a color that is not in the standard range, Rolls-Royce will produce that color–as it did for the Middle Eastern princess who wanted a car to match her perfume bottle and the woman who wanted to match her favorite evening gown.
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As a superb piece of motoring machinery, the Rolls-Royce has been an unqualified success since engineer Henry Royce and entrepreneur Charles Rolls launched it in 1904. But financially, the company has had its ups and downs recently.
Royce, the guiding spirit behind the company, was the son of an impoverished miller and had made a career as the manufacturer of electric doorbells and electric cranes before he chanced into car production.
In 1903 he bought a used French Decauville, didn’t think much of its performance and believed he could build a better car.
He turned out a two-cylinder vehicle in Manchester in 1904, and it bore some of the characteristics that have helped define Rolls-Royce cars since: It started easily, ran smoothly and quietly and did not break down the way other cars of the time were prone to do.
Rolls was a young aristocrat who had gone into business in 1902 as a car dealer. He was looking for someone with the technical skills to produce a car with which he would want to be associated, and a business acquaintance suggested he have a look at Royce’s car. He did and was sold on it.
But the partnership lasted just six years. Rolls was killed in an air accident July 12, 1910, becoming only the second British aviator to die while flying. He was 33.
Royce ran the company until his death April 22, 1933. He remains a presence in the Rolls-Royce factory, his maxims emblazoned on large signs hanging from the ceiling: “Small things make perfection, but perfection is no small thing.” “Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble.”
Rolls never married and Royce had no children, so no member of either family is associated with the company today.
The Rolls-Royce was introduced to Americans in 1906 but was selling so poorly in the mid-1920s that Claude Johnson, managing director, concluded: “The American citizen has a great fear of being laughed at locally by his neighbors as being a pretentious ass.”
Not so today. American doctors are particularly enthusiastic buyers, as are Hollywood figures and Florida and Chicago millionaires. Sales in the U.S. peaked at more than 1,000 in 1990 but recently have averaged 400 to 500. The U.S. is the second biggest Rolls market, after Britain.
CEO Morris said the U.S. remains an underdeveloped market, and he hopes to double sales there in two to three years.
The Bentley, which dates from 1919, was taken over by Rolls-Royce in 1931, when the company faced financial ruin. Developed by the engineer W.O. Bentley, the car established a number of speed and endurance records in the 1920s and 1930s.
It has never been as popular in the U.S. as the Rolls-Royce, but it sells well in Britain, and Bentley owners include Prince Charles, heir to the throne, and his sister, Princess Anne.
In World War I, when Rolls-Royce stopped car production to concentrate on aircraft engines, some of its existing cars were converted to armored vehicles and used by T.E. Lawrence–Lawrence of Arabia–in his desert campaigns against the Turks.
“Great was Rolls, and great was Royce,” he wrote. “They were worth hundreds of men to us in these deserts. . . . A Rolls in the desert was above rubies.”
Royce did research during and after the war on metal fatigue and developed alloys combining lightness with strength that are in use worldwide today. Two of his greatest designs, the Merlin aircraft engine and the Phantom III Rolls-Royce, were not completed until after his death.
The Merlin powered the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters of World War II and was used on Cromwell tanks in a modified form.
Production of the Phantom III, regarded by some automotive experts as the best car ever made, was halted at the outbreak of war after only 710 had been built. It was never resumed.
Rolls-Royce switched from car to aircraft engine production again during the war, but the car was still on the battle front. A Wraith was landed at Normandy in 1944 and used by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery for the rest of the war.
After the war, the Rolls factory was moved from its base in Derby to Crewe, where the Merlin engines had been built. Crewe, now a town of 58,000, was then one of the most important railroad hubs in England, but railroads have ceased to play as important a role in its economy.
In 1950 the company introduced the Phantom IV, a car designed at the request of the then-Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh. It was made available only to royalty and heads of state. Just 18 were built. Queen Elizabeth owns two.
In 1968, the Phantom VI was introduced. Its Special Landaulette version came with an electrically operated folding hood over the rear compartment so a monarch or president could stand and be seen in state processions.
The company’s worst financial difficulty arose in 1971. It had a contract with Lockheed Aircraft Corp. to develop and produce the RB211 engine for Lockheed’s Tristar aircraft. It committed itself to a fixed price before development began, and when redesign became necessary, the price skyrocketed. Rolls-Royce could not complete the contract and was forced into bankruptcy.
The company was split in two. The government retained control of the aircraft engine company, and the Rolls-Royce Motor Car Co. became a part of the Vickers PLC, an engineering conglomerate.
During the recession of the early 1990s, Rolls-Royce Motor Car began losing money and production fell to a low of 1,350 cars in 1993. Rolls was dragging down Vickers stock prices. The company, then with a work force of about 5,000, was forced to cut its payroll in half and reorganize its way of producing cars.
Though the company has been profitable the last five years, Vickers executives began to worry whether it could survive another economic downturn that would push Rolls-Royce into the red. Vickers also realized it did not have the resources to expand the company in the way Morris wants. He has talked of introducing eight new models, including Rolls-Royce convertibles, in the next few years.
So last fall Vickers began looking for a buyer.
As there was no major British manufacturer left, the choice had to be European, American or Japanese. In the end, only BMW, which supplies Rolls-Royce and Bentley with engines, and Volkswagen bid for it. VW won with an offer of $783 million.
Rolls-Royce PLC, the company that makes aircraft engines, backed BMW’s bid and has threatened to refuse to hand over the name, which it owns, to Volkswagen. But Vickers executives say this is unlikely to stand up and they expect the sale to be completed by July 30.
Volkswagen Chief Executive Ferdinand Piech has talked of pouring investment into Rolls-Royce and doubling the work force in a few years.
Morris, who joined Rolls-Royce 15 months ago from Audi and formerly was with Rover, said he did not anticipate German executives moving into Crewe at the beginning. In the long term, he said, an exchange of Rolls-Royce and VW executives would be “the best way of unlocking the synergies between the companies.”
The sale of Rolls-Royce, he said, is “not the end of civilization as we know it.”
“We come to work, owned by Volkswagen, as British as British can be,” he said. “If we change, and move away from our heritage and values, it will not be a strategic decision. It will be because of incompetence. We don’t intend to be incompetent.”
94 YEARS OF ROLLS
With the sale of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars to Volkswagen AG of Germany, there are no more British-owned carmakers. Here is a look at the history of the last of a breed:
1904–Engineer Henry Royce and entrepreneur Charles S. Rolls meet to discuss making motorcars that would be ahead of their time. Early development of Royce motorcars in Manchester. By year-end an agreement is signed to give Charles S. Rolls and Co. rights to sell Royce cars in Britain under a new name–Rolls-Royce.
1907–The Silver Ghost, a smooth-running 40-50 h.p. motorcar, makes its debut.
1911–The 7-inch, bronze-cast Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament, known in the U.S. as The Flying Lady, goes into production. It was created by sculptor Charles Sykes. (Today’s Spirit of Ecstasy is 3 inches tall, maded of stainless steel and mounted on a spring-loaded mechanism designed to retract instantly into the radiator shell if struck from any direction.)
1921–Silver Ghost is made for U.S. market in Springfield, Mass.
1922–Rolls-Royce Twenty introduced, with body-work styles from independent coach builders.
1925–Launch of Rolls-Royce Phantom I with 6-cylinder engine.
1929–Phantom II introduced with sophisticated new suspension system.
1931–Rolls-Royce takes over Bentley Motors. (Walter Owen Bentley, known as “W.O.,” developed a racing engine in 1919 and set out to make fast cars. His first 3-liter motorcar was produced in Cricklewood in 1920. During the ’20s, with the 3-liter 85-b.h.p. engine providing speeds of 80 m.p.h, and more, Bentley Motors set numerous speed and endurance records and became inextricably linked with the Le Mans.)
1933–Debut of Bentley’s 3.5-liter “Silent Sports Car.”
1936–Rolls Phantom III offers V-12 engine and 100-m.p.h. performance.
–Bentley 4.25-liter saloon introduced, later with overdrive.
1938–Debut of Rolls-Royce Wraith, the last motorcar to be made at Rolls’ factory in Derby, England.
1939–Launch of Bentley Mark V, the first car with independent front suspension.
1946–Bentley standard steel saloon, Mark VI, is made in at Rolls’ new factory in Crewe, England.
1947–The Silver Wraith, the last Rolls-Royce car to be sold exclusively as chassis and engine, with body work by independent coach builders, is made in Crewe.
1949–Introduction of the Silver Dawn, the first model to combine chassis and integral steel body work.
1950–The Phantom IV is designed for royalty and heads of state.
1952–Introduction of the Bentley R and 120-m.p.h. R Continental, the world’s fastest four-seat motorcar.
1955–Silver Cloud launched.
–Bentley S series introduced.
1959–Silver Cloud II equipped with 6,230-cc V-8 engine.
–Rolls-Royce Phantom V introduced.
–New 6,230-cc V-8 engine introduced for Bentley S2.
1962–Revised Bentley S3 introduced.
–Silver Cloud III launched.
1965–Silver Shadow introduced, first monocoque Rolls-Royce.
1966–Debut of Bentley T series with radical new design featuring independent suspension, disc brakes, automatic leveling, power braking and monocoque construction.
1967–Introduction of Bentley T drophead coupe.
1968–Phantom VI introduced.
1970–Bentley engine capacity increased to 6,750-cc.
1971–Launch of Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible and formation of new company: Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd.
1977–Bentley T2 introduced.
–Silver Shadow II introduced.
1980–Silver Spirit and long-wheelbase Silver Spur introduced.
–Debut of Bentley Mulsanne saloon, named for famous long straightaway at LeMans.
1982–Bentley Mulsanne Turbo, hailed as “the new Blower Bentley,” provides new levels of sporting performance.
1984–Bentley Eight announced.
1985–Bentley Turbo R introduced, a four-seat saloon with top speed of 150 m.p.h. and 0-to-60-m.p.h. acceleration in less than seven seconds.
1986–Bentley specifications further upgraded in Mulsanne S.
1992–Bentley Continental R grand touring coupe introduced.
1993–Introduction of Bentley Brooklands saloon.
–Silver Spirit III and Silver Spur III introduced.
1994–Special edition Rolls-Royce Flying Spur introduced.
1995–Bentley Azure convertible launched.
1996–Long-wheelbase, special Rolls-Royce Park Ward introduced.
–Bentley Continental T offers 420-b.h.p. engine that accelerates from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in 5.7 seconds, has a top speed of 170 m.p.h. and 595 foot-pounds of torque, the highest figure ever recorded for a production motor car.
1998–All new Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph introduced.
–Volkswagens AG buys Rolls-Royce.
Source: Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, Bentley Motor Cars
