28 Facts You Probably Didn't Know About Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has seen a significant interest in the myths and legends that endear so many to the brand. This trend began ever since it revealed that it equips Bespoke commissioned motor cars with a refrigerator that has two cooling modes: ‘Summer’ and ‘Winter’ to ensure that occupants’ beverages are delivered at the optimum temperature for the season.

In this spirit, now it is time to share more of the truths that have defined the modern Rolls-Royce success story:

#1. At its prototype stage, the 6.75-liter Rolls-Royce V12 engine had to faultlessly revolve 750 million times before being approved for production.

#2. The mechanism that retracts the Spirit of Ecstasy to prevent theft and damage is comprised of 24 unseen linkages and bearings.

#3. The Spirit of Ecstasy is so valued by the marque that there is a safe lock on the shop floor containing no more mascots than necessary for a single day of production. The code is known only by a small circle of craftspeople.

#4. 14 highly qualified Rolls-Royce engineers run a fleet of 16 intensive test vehicles 365 days a year on top of their normal workloads. They do this without complaint.

#5. The sensors in a Rolls-Royce are so sensitive they can detect if a driver or passenger shifts their body weight from one side to the other and adapt accordingly.

#6. The 1300-Watt, 18 Channel, 18 speaker Bespoke Audio system in a Rolls-Royce is so exhaustively tuned, interior designers must seek the permission of the audio engineer who created it before making any design changes.

#7. Over 25-meters of cabling is used to transfer audio data in a Rolls-Royce. Fiber-optic cabling is used to ensure immunity against interference.

#8. Over 100 microprocessors decipher 130 million lines of code, ensuring every Rolls-Royce’s suite of cutting- edge technological features can be called upon instantly and seamlessly by the driver or passengers.

#9. Much like the wood veneer inside a Rolls-Royce motor car, the weave of the carbon-fiber that makes up the central spine of Dawn’s ‘Aero Cowling’ tonneau cover is expertly book-matched by hand to achieve a perfect chevron pattern.

#10. In 2017, the year the marque launched its eighth Phantom, Bloomberg conducted a study that researched the most mentioned brands in pop music. Rolls-Royce topped the list, beating Ferrari, Hennessy and Rolex.

#11. Before building the ‘Clean Room’ where the ‘Gallery’ fascia within Rolls-Royce Phantom is assembled, Associates from The Home of Rolls-Royce visited pharmaceutical and microprocessor Clean Rooms in order to fully understand these complex manufacturing laboratories.

#12. A sensor within the Gallery Clean Room continually measures the particle concentration in microns – an alert is sent if particles are detected at a size larger than 0.001 of a micron. The width of a human hair is between 50-100 microns in diameter.

#13. A Rolls-Royce Black Badge Wraith ascended the famous hill-climb at the 2015 Goodwood Festival of Speed in just 52.71 seconds. A feat that could not be bettered by two Maseratis, a Porsche and a Bentley.

#14. Sommeliers advise that the optimum serving temperatures of non-vintage Champagne is six degrees centigrade and vintage Champagnes is 11 degrees centigrade. Rolls-Royce equips its motor cars with a bespoke refrigerator that operates two cooling modes, chilling to six degrees and 11 degrees, respectively.

#15. Starlight Headliner, one the marque’s most popular Bespoke features, is comprised of 1,340 individually hand-woven fiber-optics. Customers can specify a specific constellation which will be verified by a local Observatory. In total over 2 kilometers of cabling is painstakingly hand-woven to achieve this.

#16. One lady asked for the leather color of her Rolls-Royce to be matched to her Red Setter. This was achieved with no harm to the dog.

#17. The marque’s first showroom in Conduit Street, Mayfair was founded a short step from London’s famous center of tailoring, Savile Row. Here, Sir Henry Royce and his partner The Honorable Charles Rolls echoed the offerings of their neighbors by providing London’s most stylish clients with the automotive equivalent of the finest cloths; a perfectly engineered Rolls-Royce chassis and running gear.

#18. Imperfections have no place at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. Leather is sourced from only the finest bulls, reared at high-altitude to avoid stretching and insect bites. Blemishes, imperceptible to the untrained eye are rejected, with off-cut leather being passed down to the fashion industry. The hides are sourced from the meat industry.

#19. It takes 17 days to handcraft the leather elements of a Rolls-Royce interior.

#20. To achieve the marque’s mirror-like finish, at least 5 layers of paint are applied by the only robots you will find at the Home of Rolls-Royce. Any hard-to-reach spots are painted by highly skilled paint experts. In total, the process of applying a flawless exterior finish takes seven days and uses over 100 pounds of paint.

#21. The most detailed single piece of embroidery to feature in a Rolls-Royce motor car is a Peregrine Falcon, the fastest bird in the world. The photo-realistic design consists of nearly 250,000 stitches and took a team of designers, craftspeople, and engineers over one month to develop.

#22. The 48 painstakingly crafted wood parts that comprise a Phantom interior take 28 days to produce. A sense of seamless flow of grain is ensured by only using wood from one tree for each motor car.

#23. Mark Court is the only man in the able to hand-apply a perfectly straight Phantom coachline. In total it takes 3 hours per side. He uses special brushes made from ox and squirrel hair to ensure the line is precisely level and a uniform 3-mm in width. He honed his steady-hand painting pub-signs.

#24. A Rolls-Royce is so quiet, Sir Henry Royce ordered the fitting of signs at the factory proclaiming ‘Caution, Silent Cars’.  Modern health and safety dictate that craftspeople maneuvering cars around the Manufacturing Plant must intermittently sound the horn as a warning.

#25. A Rolls-Royce rides on a 16-litre air cushion married to dampers and springs that dynamically adjust themselves every five milliseconds to deliver the marque’s sovereign magic carpet ride

#26. When creating the Rolls-Royce Architecture, on which all contemporary Rolls-Royces are built, engineers incorporated a resonance chamber into the body’s sill section. This, essentially, transforms the body of the motor car into a sub woofer, delivering exceptional low frequency audio performance.

#27. The brief given to the marque’s engineers tasked with developing the roof mechanism for the Rolls-Royce Dawn was to create a silent ballet. They emphatically succeeded. While being the largest production convertible roof in the world, it is also the quietest.

#28. Rolls-Royce’s craftspeople have been drawn from a variety of industries including make-up artists, tattooists, military tailoring, and even a former parliamentary red box maker.

Source: Car Guides PH