A Brief History: How Rolls met Royce

Not everyone knows the history of Rolls-Royce. Some people may not even realize that Rolls-Royce is the combination of two different names. Indeed, the history of Rolls-Royce stretches all the way back to 1904 when two men met and history was born.

If Charles Rolls and Sir Henry Royce hadn’t come together in that year, you wouldn’t be planning on visiting that Rolls-Royce dealership tomorrow. It simply wouldn’t exist. Neither would that new Rolls-Royce for sale. Luckily, however, Rolls and Royce both loved engineering and desired to create the Best Car in the world.

Charles Rolls was already an accomplished motorist by the time he met Henry Royce. He even broke the world land speed record in Dublin in 1903. He began importing Peugeot motor cars in Britain with Claude Johnson and continued to enjoy his driving pursuits.

While Charles had a privileged upbringing, Henry Royce was already at work when he was nine. Thanks to an aunt who paid for him to have an apprenticeship with the Great Northern Railway Works, he learned from one of the top engineers. From there he continued to educate himself. But it wasn’t until he bought a second-hand French Decauville that he gained an interest in cars. But instead of just driving it, he improved upon it. And that’s when things changed.

A meeting of Rolls and Royce was arranged by Henry Edmunds; a meeting that has since changed history. After Rolls saw what Royce had done, he wanted to sell the cars. They would do so under the name Rolls-Royce, and thus a lasting partnership was born.
The new Rolls-Royce for sale that you see hasn’t come through history with such simplicity. The two had to advertise, engineer, work, and then much later the company itself had to struggle through two world wars to survive and continue on today. Your Braman Rolls-Royce dealership is proof that the Rolls-Royce company knows how to survive, to continue to bring products that people love to the forefront, and how to continue to honor the two men who began a legacy so long ago.