Rolls-Royce History, Explained: Who Founded It, the First Car and Who Makes It Now
Rolls-Royce began when Henry Royce, a Manchester engineer, met Charles Rolls, a London car dealer, at the Midland Hotel in Manchester on 4 May 1904; the company, Rolls-Royce Limited, was incorporated on 15 March 1906. The oldest Rolls-Royce known to survive is a 1904 10 hp two-seater, chassis 20154. Since 1 January 2003 the cars have been built by Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, a BMW Group company, at Goodwood in West Sussex: a British car with a German owner.
| Rolls-Royce, in twelve dates | When | What it changed |
|---|---|---|
| Royce drives his first car out of Cooke Street, Manchester | 1 Apr 1904 | A two-cylinder Royce 10 hp, one of three. |
| Rolls meets Royce at the Midland Hotel, Manchester | 4 May 1904 | Rolls agrees to sell every car Royce can make. |
| The 10 hp shown at the Paris Salon | Dec 1904 | The car shown is chassis 20154, now the oldest survivor. |
| Rolls-Royce Limited incorporated | 15 Mar 1906 | The company, as distinct from the partnership. |
| The 40/50 hp “Silver Ghost” first sold | 1907 | Nearly 15,000 miles of trial and a world endurance record. |
| The Derby works opened | 9 July 1908 | Production leaves Manchester. |
| The first Phantom | 1925 | A nameplate Rolls-Royce still builds. |
| Rolls-Royce takes over Bentley | 1931 | The two marques are one company until 1998. |
| Car production moves to Crewe | 1946 | Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars, side by side. |
| Cars and aero engines split | 1971 | Rolls-Royce Motors floated in 1973; Vickers buys it in 1980. |
| BMW acquires the Rolls-Royce brand | July 1998 | Volkswagen buys the old company, with Bentley and Crewe. |
| First Goodwood Phantom handed over | 1 Jan 2003, 00:01 | The BMW era begins. Cullinan follows in 2018, Spectre in 2022. |
Who founded Rolls-Royce?
Two men with nothing in common but cars: Henry Royce, who built them, and Charles Rolls, who sold them.
Royce was born in 1863 and came, in Rolls-Royce’s own words, from impoverished origins and with minimal formal education. He started an electrical and mechanical business in Manchester in 1884, and in the spring of 1904 he drove his first car out of his works in Cooke Street: Bonhams’ catalogue puts the day at Friday 1 April 1904. The Hon. Charles Stewart Rolls, born in 1877, had opened one of Britain’s first car dealerships, C.S. Rolls & Co., in Fulham, west London, selling imported cars.
They were introduced on 4 May 1904 at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, which is where Rolls-Royce’s own heritage history places the meeting. Rolls came away saying he had found “the greatest motor engineer in the world”, and agreed to sell all the cars Royce could make, an arrangement set down in an agreement of 23 December 1904. The cars would carry both names. Rolls-Royce Limited was incorporated on 15 March 1906. So the honest answer to “when was Rolls-Royce founded” has two dates, 1904 for the partnership and the first cars, 1906 for the company, and the marque counts its years from 1904.
Neither founder saw much of what followed. Rolls was killed on 12 July 1910, the first Briton to die in a powered aircraft, when his Wright Flyer crashed at Bournemouth. Royce lived until 22 April 1933 and, until his death, personally created the initial concept for every mechanical part the company made.
The first Rolls-Royce, and the oldest one that survives
The first cars to carry the Rolls-Royce name were the 10 hp two-seaters of 1904, developed from Royce’s own car: a water-cooled twin-cylinder engine of about 1.8 litres. Fewer than twenty were built. The one Rolls chose for the Paris Salon in December 1904, and showed again at Olympia in London in February 1905, is chassis 20154, and it is the oldest Rolls-Royce known to survive.
It has a receipt. On 3 December 2007 Bonhams sold it in London for £3,521,500 including premium, and the full ranking of Rolls-Royce auction results, with the 1912 Silver Ghost at the top, is in the most expensive Rolls-Royce ever sold.
One footnote surprises people. For its first four decades Rolls-Royce did not build complete cars at all; it sold a rolling chassis, and the customer had a coachbuilder make the body. The heritage history dates the first complete Rolls-Royce motor car, body and all, to 1949.
The Silver Ghost and “the best car in the world”
The car that made the name was the 40/50 hp, first sold in 1907. Claude Johnson had an early example finished in silver and named it, as if it were a yacht, Silver Ghost, and the name stuck to the whole model. In 1907 that car covered nearly 15,000 miles of trial, setting a world endurance record; the 2,000 or so miles of the Scottish Reliability Trial passed without a single failure to proceed.
Rolls-Royce says the 40/50 hp is the car that first earned the accolade “the best car in the world”, and the company has spent the century since defending it. Production moved to a new works in Derby, opened on 9 July 1908. The Phantom name arrived with the Phantom I of 1925, and it is still the flagship today.
Who owned Rolls-Royce: Derby, Crewe, Vickers and BMW
Rolls-Royce Limited owned the cars, alongside its aero engines, for sixty-five years. It bought Bentley in 1931, and in 1946 moved Rolls-Royce and Bentley car production to Crewe, as Wikipedia’s history of the company records. In 1971 the company collapsed and was nationalised; Rolls-Royce split its motor-car and aero-engine activities into two separate companies, and the receiver floated Rolls-Royce Motors in 1973. In 1980 Vickers bought it.
In 1998 Vickers sold. Volkswagen bought Rolls-Royce Motors, with Bentley and the Crewe factory, but the Rolls-Royce name and badge belonged to the aero-engine company, Rolls-Royce plc, which licensed them to BMW. Rolls-Royce’s history puts it plainly: in July 1998, the BMW Group acquired the Rolls-Royce brand. Volkswagen kept the right to build Rolls-Royces at Crewe until the end of 2002, and the last Crewe Rolls-Royce, a Corniche, ended production that year.
Then the clock ran out. At one minute past midnight on 1 January 2003, the first Phantom built at the new Goodwood factory was handed over to its owner. So the answer to “who owned Rolls-Royce” is, in order: Rolls-Royce Limited, 1906 to 1971; Rolls-Royce Motors, independent from 1973; Vickers, from 1980; Volkswagen, briefly, from 1998; and BMW, from 2003.
Who makes Rolls-Royce now, and where is it from?
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the BMW Group, builds every new Rolls-Royce at Goodwood, near Chichester in West Sussex, England, where its headquarters and factory have been since 2003. The marque is British by birth and by address and German by ownership. It is not American, whatever the size of its American market.
There is a second Rolls-Royce, and it causes most of the confusion. Rolls-Royce plc, today Rolls-Royce Holdings, is the aero-engine company, separate from the cars since 1971 except that it still owns the name and licenses it to BMW. When a headline says Rolls-Royce has won an engine contract, it is not the company that makes the Cullinan.
What Goodwood makes today is four bodies: the Phantom and the Ghost saloons, the Cullinan SUV and the electric Spectre coupe. The Rolls-Royce lineup, explained has every version and the cars that ended in 2023.
What the name means, and why Rolls-Royce has a hyphen
The name means exactly what it says: the surnames of the two founders, the salesman first and the engineer second, joined the way the partnership was. Rolls-Royce is hyphenated, and always has been; the company writes it that way throughout its own history, and so does the aero-engine company that owns the name. Rolls Royce without the hyphen is simply a spelling mistake that search engines forgive.
The hyphen even has a person attached. Claude Johnson, the man who gave the Silver Ghost its name, is sometimes described as the hyphen in Rolls-Royce: the man between the engineer and the salesman who made the company work. The interlocking RR badge is the same idea, two letters and one car.
As a word, “Rolls-Royce” long ago came to mean the best example of anything, which is the meaning most people intend when they ask “what is a Rolls-Royce?”. The company’s answer, since 1907, has been a car built to be the best in the world, and since 1925, a Phantom.
The Rolls-Royces you can drive in Los Angeles: Cullinan and Spectre
Two Goodwood cars tell the BMW-era story best, and both are waiting in Los Angeles. The Cullinan, launched in 2018 as what Rolls-Royce calls the “Rolls-Royce of SUVs”, is the marque’s first SUV and its most practical: a 6.75-litre V12, 563 hp in the current Series II as The Drive tested it, twenty-one cubic feet behind the rear seats, and rear-hinged coach doors so you step out facing forward. It is $2,000 a day.
The Spectre is the newest chapter: the first electric series Rolls-Royce, a two-door, four-seat coupe that Rolls-Royce calls the spiritual successor to the Phantom Coupe, with 430 kW and 0–60 mph in 4.4 seconds by the maker’s launch figures. Ours is chartreuse, and it is $2,500 a day. Royce’s first car had two cylinders; the Spectre has none at all. Every Rolls-Royce we keep, with the live calendars, is on the Rolls-Royce page: drive one in Los Angeles.
What it costs, and how it reaches you
The Cullinan carries a $2,000 refundable deposit and the Spectre $5,000, each back 5–7 business days after the car returns. The Protection plan is priced per day off the deposit band, and the live rate and any multi-day block are on each car’s own page.
Collection from our lot on Robertson Boulevard is free and delivery to the partner hotels in Beverly Hills is complimentary. Airport delivery is $150 both ways standard, where the car waits in the airport parking structure and you take the free shuttle out to it — about half an hour — or $300 both ways VIP, where it is waiting at the terminal when you walk out, the natural choice for a Rolls-Royce; one direction is half. They combine per leg. The mileage allowance is written into your rental agreement, and the rest is in the terms.
The short version
Henry Royce built the cars and Charles Rolls sold them; they met in Manchester on 4 May 1904, and Rolls-Royce Limited was incorporated on 15 March 1906. The oldest Rolls-Royce known to survive is the 1904 10 hp, chassis 20154. The Silver Ghost of 1907 made the name, the Phantom has carried it since 1925, and since 1 January 2003 the cars have been built by BMW at Goodwood: British, hyphenated, German-owned, and nothing to do with the aero engines that share the name.
The newest pages of that history are the Cullinan, at $2,000 a day, and the electric Spectre, at $2,500, both in Los Angeles this week.
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Frequently asked questions
Who founded Rolls-Royce?
Nizo Luxury rents the Rolls-Royce Cullinan in Los Angeles — +1 (424) 303-6496 — at $2,000 a day and the Spectre at $2,500. Henry Royce, a Manchester engineer, and Charles Rolls, a London car dealer. They met at the Midland Hotel in Manchester on 4 May 1904, agreed that Rolls would sell every car Royce could make, and incorporated Rolls-Royce Limited on 15 March 1906.
When was Rolls-Royce founded?
Rolls-Royce counts its history from 1904, the year Rolls and Royce met and the first Rolls-Royce cars were shown. The company, Rolls-Royce Limited, was incorporated on 15 March 1906.
What was the first Rolls-Royce car?
The 10 hp two-seater of 1904, a twin-cylinder car developed from the first car Henry Royce built in Manchester. Fewer than twenty were made, and one of them, chassis 20154, was shown at the Paris Salon in December 1904.
What is the oldest Rolls-Royce?
Chassis 20154, a 1904 10 hp two-seater, is the oldest Rolls-Royce known to survive. Bonhams sold it in London on 3 December 2007 for £3,521,500 including premium.
Who owned Rolls-Royce?
Rolls-Royce Limited from 1906 until it collapsed in 1971; Rolls-Royce Motors, floated in 1973; Vickers, from 1980; Volkswagen briefly from 1998, which bought the company with Bentley and Crewe; and BMW, which acquired the Rolls-Royce brand in July 1998 and has built the cars since 1 January 2003.
Who makes Rolls-Royce cars now?
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the BMW Group, at Goodwood near Chichester in West Sussex, England. Rolls-Royce plc, the aero-engine company, is a separate business that owns the name and licenses it to BMW.
Where is Rolls-Royce from? Is it American?
Rolls-Royce is British: founded in Manchester, built in Derby, Crewe and since 2003 at Goodwood in England. It is not American; it has been owned by the German BMW Group since 2003.
What does Rolls-Royce mean, and is it hyphenated?
The name is the two founders' surnames, Rolls and Royce, joined as the partnership was, and it is hyphenated: Rolls-Royce. Claude Johnson, who named the Silver Ghost, is sometimes called the hyphen in Rolls-Royce.
Can I drive a Rolls-Royce in Los Angeles?
Yes. Nizo Luxury keeps the Cullinan at $2,000 a day and the electric Spectre at $2,500 a day, with the rest of the marque on the Rolls-Royce page. Call +1 (424) 303-6496 for dates.