50 Fun Facts About Rolls-Royce

After the Silver Ghost's 15,000-mile trial of 1907, an RAC strip-down found repairs costing roughly how much?

About £2 was the bill, precisely £2 2s 7d, where any rival of the day would have needed a full overhaul. The firm's managing director had run the car non-stop around Britain to prove the point.

The RB211's carbon-fibre Hyfil fan blades failed a 1970 test when what was fired into them at high speed?

A chicken carcass shattered the Hyfil fan in the bird-ingestion test, forcing a switch to heavier titanium blades. The cost overruns that followed pushed Rolls-Royce into receivership in February 1971.

In 2023 the UK Space Agency funded Rolls-Royce to design a small nuclear power plant for use where?

On the Moon is where the plant would run, under a $3.52 million agreement with the UK Space Agency to develop a micro-reactor for a future lunar base.

What do the RR monograms on a modern Rolls-Royce Phantom's wheel hubs do as the wheels turn?

Stay upright is what they do: each hub badge sits on its own bearing, so the monogram reads the right way up even at speed. The coachlines down the flanks are still painted by hand.

Lady Penelope's FAB 1 in Thunderbirds was a modified Rolls-Royce with how many wheels?

Six wheels, two pairs at the front, were designer Derek Meddings's way of making the car look unreal; he admitted it was purely aesthetic. Rolls-Royce approved the design and supplied a genuine Spirit of Ecstasy for the puppet-scale model.

In the 1964 film Goldfinger, how does Auric Goldfinger smuggle gold out of England in his Rolls-Royce?

As its bodywork: the gold is cast into the car's panels and driven to Switzerland, which is why the villain's number plate reads AU 1, the chemical symbol for gold. The car was a 1937 Phantom III.

On Queen Elizabeth II's Rolls-Royce state limousines, the Spirit of Ecstasy was swapped for a figure of whom?

Saint George slaying the dragon rode on the bonnet whenever the Queen used her Phantom VI limousines, which carry no number plates. They were the principal official vehicles until two Bentleys arrived in 2002.

Why did Rolls-Royce change its RR monogram from red to black in 1933, contrary to the popular legend?

Clashed with paintwork is the real reason: red sometimes fought the coachwork colours clients chose. Royce died later that year, so the change is often misread as mourning, but it came first.

Charles Rolls died at Bournemouth in July 1910, the first Briton to be killed doing what?

Flying an aeroplane killed him when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off during a display, making him the first Briton to die in a powered-aircraft crash. A month earlier he had flown non-stop to France and back.

Since HMS Valiant in 1966, what has Rolls-Royce supplied to every one of the Royal Navy's nuclear submarines?

Its reactor: every British nuclear submarine since HMS Valiant has used a Rolls-Royce pressurised water reactor. The first boat, HMS Dreadnought of 1963, ran on an American Westinghouse unit instead.

What happens to the Spirit of Ecstasy on every Rolls-Royce built since 2003 if the figure is struck?

Retracts into the radiator shell instantly on a spring-loaded mount, from whichever direction she is hit, as a pedestrian-safety measure. She has also been offered in gold plate and, until EU lighting rules intervened, illuminated crystal.

What does a modern Rolls-Royce keep in compartments built into each rear door panel, coated in Teflon to dry faster?

Umbrellas, Teflon-coated so they and their compartments dry out quickly, slide out whenever a door is opened, a fixture since the 2003 Phantom. A rear door left open as you pull away brakes the car to walking pace.

Rolls-Royce's Boat Tail of 2021, a trio of commissions, was reported as the priciest new car ever at roughly what?

$28 million was the speculated price, then the world's most expensive street-legal new car until the 2023 Droptail topped it. Each rear deck opens butterfly-style onto a parasol, cocktail tables and two fridges chilled for champagne.

The Cullinan, the Rolls-Royce SUV launched in 2018, is named after the largest gem-quality example ever found of what?

A diamond, the 3,100-carat Cullinan, gave its name to a car that US tax law classes as a station wagon, so it pays gas-guzzler tax. It became the marque's second best-seller ever.

John Lennon's 1965 Rolls-Royce limousine was famously repainted in 1967 in what base colour, covered in Romany swirls?

Yellow latex paint and artist Steve Weaver's floral swirls cost £290 and were finished the day before Sgt. Pepper came out. The car sold for $2,299,000 in 1985, then an auction record, and now lives in a Canadian museum.

Which magazine, not Rolls-Royce itself, coined 'the best car in the world' for the 40/50 model in 1907?

The Autocar coined the phrase and the firm has traded on it ever since. The 40/50 became the Silver Ghost, a name the press borrowed from a single silver-painted demonstrator and applied to all 7,874 built.

What does Rolls-Royce call the rear-hinged openings at the back of the Phantom, rejecting the usual 'suicide' nickname?

Coach doors have been offered since the first Phantom of 1925, and the modern car brakes itself to walking pace if one is still open when you drive off.

The Starlight Headliner in a Rolls-Royce threads over 1,500 fibre-optic points into the ceiling to mimic what?

A night sky full of stars appears overhead, an option already offered on the 2008 Phantom Coupé before it became a signature of the 2017 Phantom VIII.

Instead of a rev counter, the dial on a modern Rolls-Royce Phantom's instrument panel shows the driver what?

Power reserve, the share of the engine's power not being used, is displayed where other cars put a tachometer, a quiet boast that the 6.75-litre engine is loafing.

Rolls-Royce jet engines such as the Derwent, Avon and Spey all take their names from what?

British rivers suited the idea of continuous flow, water through a valley and air through a turbine, so the policy began with the first production jet in 1943. The piston engines had taken birds of prey instead.

In September 1914 the Admiralty requisitioned every available Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost chassis to build what?

Armoured cars with a rotating Vickers machine-gun turret went to the Royal Naval Air Service, and a squadron later served Lawrence of Arabia against the Turks. Some were still fighting in Egypt in 1940.

Only 18 Rolls-Royce Phantom IVs were built between 1950 and 1956; to which buyers alone were they sold?

Royalty and heads of state were the only customers judged worthy: the first went to Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, and Spain's Franco ordered three. Its straight-eight engine was a refined version of a military-vehicle unit.

The first Rolls-Royce of 1904, the 10 hp sold for £395, had an engine with how many cylinders?

Two cylinders, water-cooled, drove a car that Rolls himself thought too small; only 16 were built before the firm decided a twin was beneath the marque. Four survive, one of them in the Science Museum collection.

Nicholas Grimshaw's Goodwood plant for Rolls-Royce is hidden from the road partly by Britain's largest what?

Living roof is the term for its 3.5 hectares of sedum, planted so the factory, opened on 1 January 2003, cannot be seen from the road. Grimshaw also designed the Eden Project in Cornwall.

Under the December 1904 agreement with Henry Royce, what did Charles Rolls's London dealership undertake to do?

Buy his entire output, badged Rolls-Royce, was the deal, even though Rolls preferred three- or four-cylinder machines to the twin he was shown. The partnership was only incorporated in 1906.

Who modelled for the Spirit of Ecstasy, as the secretary and secret lover of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu?

Eleanor Thornton had already posed for the earlier mascot on Montagu's own car, a finger to her lips for the affair's secrecy. She drowned in 1915 when a U-boat sank the liner carrying the pair to India.

What was sculptor Charles Sykes's 1909 mascot for Lord Montagu's Silver Ghost called, a finger pressed to her lips?

The Whisper symbolised the secret affair between Montagu and his secretary, and it still sits in the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu. Two years later Sykes reworked her into the figure every Rolls-Royce carries.

Tradition places the first meeting of Charles Rolls and Henry Royce, in May 1904, at which newly opened railway hotel?

The Midland, opened in 1903 beside Manchester Central station, still claims the meeting of 4 May 1904, though one Royce biography argues the pair more likely met in refreshment rooms at another Manchester station.

Henry Royce built his first car in 1904 by improving on which French two-cylinder he had bought and found wanting?

Decauville, a 1901 model that would not even start when Royce collected it, was stripped and redrawn part by part into three cars badged simply Royce. He dropped its 40-pound bronze warning bell to save weight.

Which city's offer of cheap electricity won the first purpose-built Rolls-Royce factory in 1908, beating Coventry?

Derby's council offered the power deal for a 12.7-acre site on the southern edge of the city, and the firm's aero engines are still built there today. Car production left for Crewe in 1946.

Which managing director, who named and promoted the Silver Ghost, described himself as 'the hyphen in Rolls-Royce'?

Claude Johnson, first secretary of the Automobile Club, ran sales and the business while Royce built and Rolls raced, and he commissioned the Spirit of Ecstasy. He died in office in 1926.

What Battle of Britain fault did 'Miss Shilling's orifice', a restrictor in the Merlin's fuel line, help to cure?

Cutting out in a dive happened because negative g starved the Merlin's float carburettor for a moment. Engineer Beatrice Shilling's restrictor held the fuel in place until a better carburettor arrived.

The Rolls-Royce Merlin began life in 1933 as the PV-12, a designation in which PV stood for what?

Private Venture, because Rolls-Royce paid for the 12-cylinder design itself with no government money. Almost 150,000 Merlins followed, built in Britain and, by Packard, in the United States.

Which Rolls-Royce engine, the firm's first for aircraft, powered Alcock and Brown's non-stop Atlantic flight of 1919?

Eagle engines, two of them in a converted Vickers Vimy bomber, carried the pair from Newfoundland to a bog in Ireland in June 1919. The design had begun with a Mercedes racing engine seized in London in 1914.

The Rolls-Royce R engine, built for Supermarine seaplanes, won which prize for Britain in both 1929 and 1931?

Schneider Trophy wins in 1929 and 1931 were followed weeks later by an R-powered S.6B setting an airspeed record above 400 mph. Malcolm Campbell's Blue Bird used the same engine for land speed records.

Which prime minister's Conservative government nationalised Rolls-Royce after its February 1971 receivership?

Edward Heath's free-market government swallowed its principles to save the RB211 and the jobs behind it, creating Rolls-Royce (1971) Ltd. Britain also made Washington guarantee Lockheed's loans so the TriStar would survive.

What did the state-owned Rolls-Royce (1971) Ltd do with its profitable but small car division in 1973?

Sold it off separately as Rolls-Royce Motors, so the nationalised parent could concentrate on jet engines; Vickers bought the carmaker in 1980 and auctioned it again in 1998.

Volkswagen outbid BMW for Rolls-Royce Motors and Bentley in 1998 with an offer of how much?

£430 million beat BMW's £340 million, yet Volkswagen walked away without the Rolls-Royce name, which the aero-engine firm licensed to BMW for £40 million. Volkswagen later said it had mainly wanted Bentley anyway.

Rolls-Royce plc licensed its car name to BMW, not Volkswagen, in 1998 largely because the two already did what?

Made jet engines together since 1990 as BMW Rolls-Royce, the partnership behind the BR700 business-jet engines, later renamed Rolls-Royce Deutschland. BMW could also stop supplying Volkswagen's engines on 12 months' notice.

Why was the Spirit of Ecstasy redesigned lower, with reshaped robes, for the electric Rolls-Royce Spectre of 2022?

Aerodynamics drove it: the lower figure helped the Spectre to a drag coefficient of 0.25, the slipperiest Rolls-Royce ever built, 111 years after the mascot was first registered.

The 1965 Silver Shadow was the first Rolls-Royce built with which feature, long standard on mass-market cars?

Unitary construction replaced the separate frame, and the car also borrowed Citroën's high-pressure hydropneumatic self-levelling under licence. It became the best-selling Rolls-Royce of all time.

Between 1921 and 1931 Rolls-Royce built nearly 3,000 cars at a factory in which American city?

Springfield, Massachusetts, turned out 2,944 Silver Ghosts and Phantoms, with bodies by Brewster, to clear a three-year order backlog, before the Depression closed it in 1931.

Rolls-Royce beat Napier to the bankrupt Bentley Motors in 1931 by placing its bid through what?

A front company named the British Equitable Central Trust hid the buyer's identity; Rolls-Royce then killed Bentley's 8 Litre, a rival to its Phantom, and kept little but the name.

The oldest surviving Rolls-Royce, a 1904 10 hp registered U44, sold at Bonhams in 2007 for how much?

£3.2 million, about £3.6 million with premium and taxes, bought chassis 20154, one of four survivors from a run of just 16. Another sits in the Science Museum collection.

Which Rolls-Royce engine, designed at Bristol, swivels four nozzles to let the Harrier hover?

Pegasus vectors thrust from both fan and turbine downwards, and it powers every Harrier ever built. Pratt & Whitney held a licence but never completed a single engine.

Which engine, inherited when Rolls-Royce bought Bristol Siddeley in 1966, took Concorde to twice the speed of sound?

Olympus 593, developed with France's Snecma, was the only reheated turbojet ever to power a commercial aircraft, and at supersonic cruise it reached about 43% efficiency, then a record for any engine.

Until 2002, how did a standard Bentley usually differ from the Rolls-Royce it was built alongside at Crewe?

The grille and badges, and little else, separated the badge-engineered pairs, since the Bentley was built to the same design. Only after Volkswagen and BMW split the marques did they diverge.

Which Rolls-Royce turbojet, Britain's first in production, powered the RAF's first jet fighter into service in 1944?

Welland, a river name, was Whittle's W.2B design after Rover's engineers had bogged down; Stanley Hooker got it running and it entered production in 1943 for the Gloster Meteor. The Derwent soon replaced it.

In 1943 Rolls-Royce took over Rover's jet factory at Barnoldswick in exchange for what?

Its Nottingham tank works, where the Merlin-derived Meteor engine was built, went to Rover in a swap agreed over dinner at a Clitheroe inn, after Whittle had fallen out with Rover's engineers.

Rolls-Royce's UltraFan demonstrator, run in 2023 as the largest jet engine ever built, has a fan of what diameter?

140 inches across, the fan is geared and variable-pitch, and the design promises 25% better fuel efficiency than the first Trent engines. It ran on a purpose-built test bed costing £90 million.