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BRIEF HISTORY
Frederick Henry Royce was
born near Peterborough, in Cambridgeshire, England on 27th March
1863.
His interest in engineering was sparked at 14 years of age, when he
started an apprenticeship at the nearby Great Northern Railway
Works, but by 19 he had already started his own manufacturing
company, with friend Ernest Claremont.
The business was
successful, and by 1903 Royce could afford to buy his first car – a
second-hand French Decauville. Though typical of the cars of the
day, Royce was dissatisfied with the standards of construction and
workmanship, and began building his own car, using the Decauville as
the starting point. |
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He went on to build three
cars in total, Claremont and another friend, Henry Edmunds using the
others. Edmunds was extremely pleased with his car, and told his
friend, Claude Johnson, all about it. News eventually filtered
through to Johnson’s boss, Charles Rolls, and a meeting was arranged
for Rolls and Royce to meet at the Midland Hotel, Manchester. The
pair agreed on a deal: Rolls gaining the exclusive rights to sell
all the cars Royce could produce.
The newly founded
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars made its international debut at the Paris
Salon of 1904, exhibiting two-, three-and-four cylinder cars of
standard-setting quality. Within three years Royce’s engineering
genius had created the Silver Ghost, a car of legendary smoothness
and, thanks to completing a 14,371-mile run virtually non-stop,
unprecedented reliability.
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