The Sunday Gentleman (43 page)

The exorbitantly high price set on the car gives it further snob appeal. Of the four different models of Rolls-Royce made today, the cheapest, tax included, is $16,998, and the highest $18,787. In other words, the price of one new Rolls-Royce would buy several top-category American automobiles. Obviously, the restrictive price keeps out undesirable elements—like people who don’t have their first million.

Rolls-Royce confines itself to making the chassis for these models and, by special arrangement, retains three famous coachmakers. Hooper and Company, H. J. Mulliner, Park Ward and Company, to build the bodies. In the near future, to keep the price down, Rolls-Royce plans to make its own bodies, allowing its coachmakers to fill only special orders.

Rolls-Royce, Ltd., makes great sacrifices to preserve the vehicle’s exclusiveness. Several years ago, in the secret experimental chambers at Crewe, a handful of technicians invented a small, 15-horsepower vehicle that passed the 20,000-mile road test in a breeze. This new auto was the king-sized Rolls-Royce reduced to a compact, and was intended to be sold for one-tenth the big car’s price, the poor man’s dream. But in the final analysis, the board of directors, though they knew its production would bring them a considerable profit, vetoed the bantam. They felt its low price would enable anyone to own a “Rolls-Royce,” thus destroying the exclusive appeal of the trade name. So the experimental model was dismantled and destroyed.

Another factor in the car’s appeal, especially to hedonists, is its irresistible air of luxury. The four standard Rolls models vary only slightly in design. The Sedanca model has an open-air front seat for the chauffeur. The sports saloon makes the greatest concession to streamlining, with a curved instead of squared top and a slight torpedoing of the fenders. The touring limousine and the enclosed limousine are immense, heavy, rich, and square wagons. The standard Rolls-Royce, a six-cylinder car which holds seven passengers and 18 gallons of gas, and has four speeds plus reverse, is built with an aluminum body instead of steel to prevent paint trouble or rust, and is “tropicalized” to prevent fungus growth or deterioration in damp weather. The Rolls-Royce is equipped with a windshield defroster that melts ice, a warning light on the dashboard that signals when the gas supply is low, a right-hand-drive steering wheel, and hydraulic lifting jacks on the sides operated by a power pump hidden beneath the hood.

All this may be had at the regular cost of no more than $18,787. But the real promise of luxury is found in the following line in the Rolls-Royce catalogue: “Quotations can be supplied for bodies of other designs to suit customers’ special requirements.” Most Rolls-Royce buyers have “special requirements” and no objection to added costs. While many other automobiles, the earth around, are custom-built for a variety of eccentric and expensive tastes, none are specially equipped so frequently and daringly as the Rolls-Royce. One English lady had the rear of her Rolls-Royce fitted out with concealed washstand, chamber pot and cupboard, and blinds that could be pulled down. An English industrialist had a Chubb safe built into his car. One Indian prince had his steering wheel made of two tusks of ivory he sent from India, another prince had the windows of his car of a special blue glass which would enable his harem wives to look out without being seen, and still another prince had an electrically operated perfume spray constructed beside the rear seat The Gaekwar of Baroda had his car interior upholstered in hand-embroidered silk which cost $32 per yard, while his wife sent a sample of her nail polish from India to London with the request that her Rolls-Royce limousine be painted in the same color. A wealthy African family, who had their Rolls-Royce roofed in canvas, requested holes for them to put their heads through so they could look about. A Middle East ruler had a small seat built on each running board to seat his lackeys. One Rolls-Royce boasted a collapsible bathtub in the rear; another, shown at the New York World’s Fair, featured a revolving cocktail bar which rotated when an electric button was pushed, and countless Rolls-Royces have been equipped with built-in bags for golf clubs and special holders for skis.

But despite all of these added baubles, most of them hidden from sight, the Rolls-Royce is probably still the most conservative car on the market. Not only those who love exclusiveness and luxury buy it. It is also the car for those who worship tradition, longevity, and solidity. Perhaps this, rather than any other factor, is the car’s greatest appeal. The Rolls-Royce has never completely submitted to the craze for streamlining. It remains, like the Englishmen who make and drive it, ancient, square, strong, unobtrusive, and dependable. While the car has undergone many modifications since its invention, two things stand unchanged. The basic outline of the car, a sleek, rectangular candy box, has not been forsaken in forty-three years. And the radiator grille remains today exactly as it was in 1904. This grille has provoked much argument within the firm. The younger Rolls engineers feel its square shape is an aesthetic eyesore and the design outmoded. They feel, also, that the shape creates continued difficulties in manufacturing—the welding of the sharp corners is a tricky task, and special machinery is necessary to make the silver plating perfectly flat. The opposing school of thought, which includes the directors of the firm and the agents who sell the car, doggedly declares, “There is something solid and permanent about the radiator, and though fashions and cars come and go, the Rolls-Royce is always the same.”

The Silver Lady mascot, on the radiator cap, is another bait for lovers of tradition. She is over thirty years old. Some owners treasure her so much that they have her unscrewed and brought in with them when they dine away from home, to prevent theft. This has given rise to the story that the Silver Lady is made of pure silver, and worth a large amount of money. The Silver Lady is made of chromium and nickel-plating, nothing more, and her value is purely sentimental.

These unchanging factors of design, radiator grilles, and mascot serve to give the Rolls-Royce the appearance of timelessness. The Rolls people say that, while the life of the average automobile is seven years, it is not unusual to see fifteen- and twenty-year-old Rolls-Royces gliding about and appearing quite in style. As a matter of fact, Rolls-Royce was able to keep one unchanged model, the Silver Ghost, in production for nineteen years, longer than that of any other car model in history (including the Model-T Ford, which was in production for only eighteen years). The Silver Ghost model came out in 1907, and no change was made in it until 1925-26. Even in the twenties, according to Rolls engineers, this model did not seem old-fashioned, because its original design had been so far in advance of the times. After nineteen years, it still had the fastest pickup of any car in the world—from a standstill, it was able to attain a mile-a-minute speed in eighteen seconds. And in a day when most automobiles had the repose of a hula dancer, it was possible to balance a penny on the Rolls-Royce’s hood with the engine idling.

One final factor serves to keep the Rolls-Royce popular on the blueblood circuit. This is the unique three-year guarantee that accompanies each new car. If anything goes wrong in the first three years, repairs or replacements are made entirely free of charge. The directors of the company like to say they can make this guarantee because of the high quality of work done by their ten thousand employees. As the auto’s creator, Sir Henry Royce, once remarked, “It’s impossible for us to make a bad car—because the doorman wouldn’t let it go out.”

Only the Rolls-Royce factory at Crewe makes automobiles (the others at Derby and Glasgow turn out airplane engines), and here the work is painstaking. Some parts are tested as many as eight times before leaving the shop. No chassis leaves Crewe without traveling fifty miles in a trick saloon body, so built that it amplifies every unwarranted sound in the engine and transmission. The final test of a new model consists of 20,000 consecutive miles of rough driving through the Derbyshire hills, through London traffic, over the
routes nationales
of France, and into the Alpine passes of Switzerland. As a result of this care, Patrick Balfour, author of
Grand Tour
, was able to drive a Rolls-Royce to India without any trouble, and Humfrey Symons was able to drive a Rolls-Royce from London to Nairobi, Kenya, and back again, without adding “a single drop of water to its radiator.”

In order to maintain the car throughout the world, and to facilitate spare-part replacement, Rolls-Royce, Ltd., has small service depots in Brussels, Rome, Zurich, Oslo, Lisbon, Copenhagen, New York, Bombay, and, “in season only,” at Cannes and Biarritz. To work in these depots, English boys must go into apprenticeship at fifteen, become specialists at twenty-one, and only then are shipped to duty in some distant comer of the world. The technical heads of the depots are required to return to Crewe periodically, like old boys returning to Eton, to keep in touch.

Rolls-Royce, Ltd., is run more like a men’s club than an automotive firm. This does not imply a disdain for profits. The firm has continually made money. Anyone farsighted enough to have invested $28,000 in Rolls stock over forty years ago could sell out for $250,000 today. (But this is admittedly only a drop in the bucket, compared to growth in stock value realized by less conservative companies.) Much of the Rolls-Royce company profits are reinvested to preserve the amenities of fife—and the reputation of the car. There is a London School of Instruction over twenty years old for owners, their families, and their chauffeurs. Any Rolls-Royce driver may attend the school’s lectures on correct lubrication and maintenance, and the lab demonstrations explaining the chassis, which last for twelve days. Upon completion of the course, the owner or chauffeur is rewarded with a sterling-silver badge.

Another club touch is the inspection service. During the three-year guarantee period, a Rolls-Royce representative (“usually public-school”) calls upon the new owner annually. “Good day, Your Grace,” the Rolls inspector will begin, “how are the pheasants this fine morning?” After an hour spent discussing the unpredictability of pheasants, the terrors of the local golf club, the scandalous conduct of Labour leaders, and the prospects at Aintree, the inspector win tactfully inquire as to the health of the automobile.

Usually at this time the Rolls man will extract an immaculate set of overalls from his attache case, pull them on, crawl under the car and examine it, then take the owner for a spin and gently point out how the car is being mishandled or neglected.

The chumminess with which Rolls-Royce, Ltd., approaches its customers is also practiced on its employees. Within the giant new auto factory at Crewe, in the airplane plant at Derby, and in that London turning, off Regent Street, where the main sales offices stand at 14-15 Conduit Street, the men who rule Rolls-Royce behave to each other like so many subdued Rotarians or Eagles. Every company executive and department head, no matter how important or unimportant he may be, addresses every other executive by initials. This was begun over two and a half decades ago, when many members of the firm who had been knighted by the current king were embarrassed at having their old co-workers call them “Sir.” The General Works manager at Crewe, Ernest Hives, who started as a test driver and is now more directly responsible for producing the car than any other single executive, is known as “E. H.” But the man who really guides the company today is “R.”—Sir Henry Royce—dead fourteen years, but still the boss.

In 1947, the board of directors held a critical meeting in London. They were debating a technical change, a radical innovation in the postwar Rolls-Royce. The majority favored the change, but the minority refused to give in, and there resulted a stalemate. Finally, one dissenting director rose and said, “Most of you favor the change, but the important thing is—would Henry Royce have done it?” After a few moments, each man present agreed that Henry Royce would not have done it. Promptly, the majority switched their votes, and the innovation was unanimously dropped.

Royce was a powerful personality, brilliant and dogmatic, and most of the executives who run the firm today are his devoted disciples. Through them the impact of his person is still felt. Another factor which enables Royce to rule the company from the grave is “the bible.”

Before World War I, Royce suffered a severe breakdown from overwork. He was given three months to live. He survived for twenty years. But he never again went within a hundred miles of the Rolls-Royce plants. Instead, he dwelt in a villa in southern France, in a seaside English-type house, surrounded by a permanent staff of three company designers and two personal secretaries. Royce ran the factory by correspondence, accurately remembering and discussing even the position of various machines. In 1915, after Royce had produced a flood of letters concerning his first airplane engine, the directors of the firm reverently collected all his correspondence and printed it as a 301-page book. Only six copies of the leather-bound volume were run off, and each was stamped on the blue cover “Strictly Private and Confidential.” These six copies were distributed among the heads of the designing and engineering staffs to be used as reference volumes. Today, kept under lock and key, these books are called “the bible,” and company executives like to murmur, “It is one of the most secret engineering documents in the world.”

Frederick Henry Royce, the son of a miller, was born in 1863. After only one year at school, he found it necessary to work as a newsboy, telegraph messenger, railway apprentice, toolmaker, and electricity tester, until he invented an improved dynamo at the age of twenty-one, made money, and was able to marry. Enjoying his sudden prosperity, he bought a French car, but was dissatisfied with it, took it apart, found its faults, and decided to build a better car. On April Fool’s Day, 1904, he tested his first handmade automobile. He drove it the fifteen miles from his workshop in Manchester to his home, followed by another car in case his creation broke down. But it did not break down, and thus the first Rolls-Royce was born. In this automobile, Royce did not try to give the world something new. He wasn’t a trailblazer. Instead, he tried to give the world something improved, something better. In days when automobiles rattled, screeched, whined, and shook, Royce produced a quiet, gliding, 10-horsepower, two-cylinder, luxury buggy.