What I learned from rereading Rolls-Royce: The Magic of a Name: The First Forty Years of Britain s Most Prestigious Company by Peter Pugh.
The historic first meeting of Rolls and Royce took place in 1904.
The two men could hardly have come from different backgrounds.
CS Rolls had been educated at Cambridge and moved comfortably in London society.
Among his aristocratic and wealthy friends, Henry Royce had known poverty and hardship all of his life.
The only university he graduated from was the one of hard knocks.
The one characteristic they had in common was a certain prickliness.
This is how Rolls described the first time he met Royce.
You may ask yourselves how it was that it came to be associated with Mister Royce.
For years, I had been engaged in the sale of foreign cars.
I wanted to be able to recommend and sell the best cars in the world.
The cars I sold were the best that could be got at that time.
But I always had a sort of feeling that I should be selling english cars instead of foreign ones.
I noticed a growing desire of my clients to purchase english made cars.
At the same time, I could not come across any english made car that I really liked.
Eventually, I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Mister Royce, and in him I found the man that I had been looking for for years.
It was immediately clear two rules, that Henry Royce was an unusual talent.
Rolls, at this time, had a prejudice against two cylinder engine cars.
And so he climbed into the passenger seat of Henry Royces little two cylinder car, prepared for all the vibration and roughness that were usually associated with that type.
To his amazement, he found that the car had a smoothness and a quite phenomenal degree of silence.
He came, he rode, and he was conquered.