Rolls-Royce celebrates 120th anniversary of founders’ meeting

MANILA: Rolls-Royce is celebrating the meeting of its founders Charles Stewart Rolls and Henry Royce.

Per the storied British car brand, the two met on May 4, 1904.

“From a modern perspective, 1904 can feel impossibly distant from our own times. But it was an age of unprecedented invention, innovation, and technological progress, in which many of the things we now take for granted first appeared. Rolls-Royce was born into this extraordinarily dynamic, creative world and would go on to shape it profoundly and irrevocably,” Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Corporate Relations and Heritage Head Andrew Ball said.

“Looking back, the meeting of Rolls and Royce seems somehow predestined, the arcs of their respective careers up to that point making it appear almost inevitable. In fact, it came about through a web of chance connections and overlapping relationships; without these, given their vastly different backgrounds and social circles, it might never have happened at all. We are proud to continue their remarkable story, to celebrate and build upon their unique legacy 120 years later,” he added.

Founding fathers

Rolls was a wealthy aristocrat who was highly (and expensively) educated and well-connected. He graduated from Cambridge in 1898 and was briefly as Third Engineer on his family’s steam yacht, the Santa Maria.

In January 1902, Rolls opened one of Britain’s first car dealerships, C. S. Rolls & Co. It sold French Panhard and Mors cars, as well as Minerva vehicles built in Belgium.

While Rolls’ business seemed to flourish, the man was frustrated as all his products were designed and built overseas, and he could find no domestically-made car that met his clients’ needs nor his own standards as an engineer and a car enthusiast.

Enter Royce.

Royce founded his first engineering company — F. H. Royce & Co. — in 1884. The firm initially produced small items such as battery-powered doorbells, but later progressed into building heavy equipment like overhead cranes and railway shunting capstans.

Despite finding success, Royce’s company suffered a financial setback in 1902. Likewise, overworking and stress led to his weakened health condition. On that note, his doctors advised him to take an extended break.

After a 10-week vacation in South Africa, Royce acquired his first car — a French Decauville. He tinkered with it and, as Rolls-Royce pointed out, took the best that existed and made it better.

Serving as the connection between the two was Henry Edmunds, who introduced the salesman (Rolls) to the engineer (Royce).

Lasting legacy

The founders of Rolls-Royce started their business with the goal of creating “the best car in the world.” With this goal in mind, the fathers of the marque helped shape a technology that would transform work, travel, communications, communities, infrastructure, design, technology, materials society, politics, economics, and culture in ways they could never
have predicted.

Photos from Rolls-Royce

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