10 Things You Should Know About Rolls-Royce

Well, one thing we all know about Rolls-Royce is “Excellence”; the company founded by Charles Rolls and Henry Royce in 1906, 116 years ago, has it written all over their cars. Here are 10 more things you may or may not know about the brand:

1) Only one man has the task of painting the pinstripe on their cars – that thin long line from behind the car’s headlights to just before the taillights. Mark Court, a former village sign painter, now paints these cars for the super-wealthy. He has been at it for the past 17 years since the company opened their Goodwood plant in 2003. And if he doesn’t get it right, the whole process of painting the car starts again from scratch.

2) The Rolls-Royce logo on its wheels always remains upright. Yes, it doesn’t rotate with the wheel. How? Each rim features a special gyroscopic mechanism that halts the centre cap from spinning, ensuring the iconic RR always remains upright and stands out.

3) Each Rolls-Royce Phantom takes two months to be built, minimum. There are more than 200 aluminium and 300 alloy parts that must be hand-welded. The upholstery alone consumes 75 square metres of material and takes 17 days to complete!

4) According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei has a collection of 500 Rolls-Royces. Yes, 500!. It is said that during the 1990s, half of the Rolls-Royce purchases were by him and his family. That’s quite believable as his total car collection is said to be worth US$4 billion.

5) To ensure that the hide used for the upholstery is blemish-free, only leather from bulls are used as cows get stretch marks from pregnancy. On top of that, the bulls are only sourced from Europe where higher altitudes mean fewer insects and mosquitoes, minimizing bite marks. How’s that for detail.

6) If you have a Rolls-Royce, you definitely must have a chauffeur. And not everyone can handle a Rolls-Royce the way it is supposed to be handled. And for that reason, there is the ‘White Glove Programme’. It is a 3-day programme that teaches your chauffeur everything they need to know about the brand and history plus etiquette: how to carry oneself and dress smartly, keeping shoes polished and hair neat, how to open and close the doors without leaving fingerprints, braking gently, adjusting the air-conditioning vents properly and so on.

7) 60% of all Rolls-Royces are still on the road. Due to its high quality and durability, many of the cars that have ever left the Rolls-Royce factory are still in use today.

8) The Spirit of Ecstasy (also called ‘Emily’, ‘Silver Lady or ‘Flying Lady’) is one of the most iconic hood ornaments in the automotive industry. Baron John Edward Scott-Montagu commissioned the sculptor, Charles Sykes, to create the likeness of his secretary-turned-mistress, Eleanor Velasco Thornton

9) The first Rolls-Royce had a measly 10 horsepower. Well, that was way back in 1904 at the dawn of the automobile industry. It had a 1.8-litre two-cylinder engine and featured a three-bearing crank and twin camshafts that activated the side exhaust and overhead valves. It was first sold at a price of 395 pounds. Only 16 were made, of which only 4 survived. A 1904 unit was sold for 3.2 million pounds in December 2007!

10) Even though Rolls-Royces’s automobile and the aviation spin-off are owned by different entities, they do share one thing in common – excellence, as stated above. Their single-seat, electric-powered propeller plane, named the Spirit of Innovation, smashed the world record with a speed of 387mph, making it the fastest electric airplane in the world. Heck, it is the fastest electric vehicle, period.