1985 Veteran Car Run
arrived from his Cooke Street works, just off Stretford Road.
Neither man could have appreciated the significance of what was about to happen. Yet when Rolls and Royce sat down together, there was an immediate meeting of minds. Their backgrounds were very different, but their ambitions were remarkably complementary.
Rolls, born into privilege, was the gifted salesman, promoter and pioneering motorist. Royce, 14 years his senior, was the self-made engineer whose obsession with precision and mechanical excellence had already made his electrical manufacturing business highly successful.
Their agreement was straightforward: Royce would manufacture motor cars and Rolls would sell them exclusively.
The result would become one of the world’ s most celebrated automotive partnerships.
Charles Stewart Rolls was born on 27 August 1877, the youngest son of Lord and Lady Llangattock. Raised at the family’ s Hendre estate in Monmouthshire, he developed an early fascination with engineering and electricity. At Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied electrical and mechanical engineering, he became a keen cyclist and subsequently a passionate motorist.
In October 1896, while still a student, Rolls returned from Paris with a 3¾hp Peugeot Phaeton. It was the beginning of a lifelong obsession.
He became involved with the newly formed( soonto-be Royal) Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland and threw himself into promoting motoring. In 1900 he helped organise the Club’ s influential 1000 Mile Trial, driving a 12hp Panhard-Levassor.
By 1902, Rolls had established his own motor business at Lillie Hall in West London. Increasingly frustrated that British manufacturers appeared to be lagging behind their French counterparts, he wanted a British car capable of matching – and ultimately surpassing – the best continental machinery.
In Manchester he found the engineer capable of achieving precisely that.
Frederick Henry Royce’ s early life was in stark contrast to Rolls’ s privileged upbringing. Born at Alwalton, Northamptonshire, in 1863, Royce was the son of a mill manager and small-scale farmer. Following the collapse of his father’ s business and his father’ s death in a poorhouse, young Henry had to fend for himself.
He worked as a newspaper vendor and telegraph boy before an aunt financed an apprenticeship at the Great Northern Railway Works at Peterborough, where he learned from the legendary engineer Patrick Stirling.
Royce was an insatiable student. He taught himself about electricity, studied at night and learned to use a lathe. At 21, he and his friend Ernest Claremont established an electrical manufacturing business in Manchester’ s Cooke Street.
Royce Ltd prospered, producing electrical motors, cranes and other equipment. His interest in motor cars began after he and Claremont acquired De Dion quadricycles. Royce subsequently bought a 10hp Decauville and quickly discovered that its shortcomings offended his exacting engineering standards.
His response was characteristic: he dismantled it, studied its weaknesses and decided he could build something better.
The first Royce engine was tested on 16 September 1903. On 1 April 1904, Royce drove his first complete car out of the Cooke Street factory. Henry Edmunds subsequently drove it in the Automobile Club’ s Sideslip Trials, where its remarkable smoothness attracted attention.
Rolls was impressed. Although he disliked twincylinder engines, he could not ignore the refinement Royce had achieved. Edmunds persuaded him to travel north and meet the engineer responsible.
That meeting at the Midland Hotel on 4 May 1904 changed motoring forever.
The initial agreement was for Rolls & Co. to take Royce’ s entire output. Although the legal formalities were not completed until 1905, the cars were marketed under the Rolls-Royce name from late 1904.
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