Rolls Royce Tyres



Classic Rolls Royce Tyres

On the following pages, Longstone Classic Tyres give classic tyre fitment recommendations for Rolls Royce cars.


Rolls Royce Tyres


Longstone Tyres owner Dougal Cawley treated himself to a Shadow 1 and used it for a family holiday which involved spanking down to Italy with the family of 5. This short film shows how stable the car is fitted with the Asymmetric Michelin XVS tyres when wafted at 110 mph on an Autobahn. 
These Rolls Royce Silver Shadows are wasted dawdling around as wedding cars. They are perfectly capable of high-speed cruising and long-distance trips, but they do benefit from fitting a quality tyre.


110 mph in a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow 1


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Rolls-Royce History

Henry Royce founded a mechanical and electrical business in 1884. In his Manchester factory, he produced his first vehicle, a two-cylinder Royce 10, in 1904. Henry Royce met Charles Rolls in Manchester on May 4, that year. C.S. Rolls & Co., an early vehicle dealership in Fulham, was owned by Rolls. Despite his predilection for three- or four-cylinder autos, Rolls loved the Royce 10, and in a second agreement on December 23, 1904, pledged to accept all the cars Royce could make.

Rolls Royce 20-25hp 1930
1930 Rolls Royce 20-25hp

In 1906, Royce was working on an improved six-cylinder car with greater power than the Rolls-Royce 30 hp. This was Rolls-Royce's original model, dubbed the 40/50 horsepower at the time. Johnson completed an early version in silver and named it Silver Ghost, as if it were a boat. Unofficially, until the advent of the 40/50 Phantom in 1925, the press and public dubbed all 40/50 autos Silver Ghost. Aero-engine manufacture began in 1914 at the request of the government. The first model, the Rolls-Royce Eagle, was introduced in 1915. Alcock and Brown's first continuous trans-Atlantic flight in an aircraft in their converted Vickers Vimy bomber propelled by two Eagle engines.

Following World War I, Rolls-Royce successfully evaded attempts to persuade British automobile manufacturers to consolidate. In response to declining sales of the 40/50 Silver Ghost during a brief but profound postwar downturn, Rolls-Royce launched the smaller, more inexpensive Twenty in 1922.

Rolls-Royce created a new facility in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the United States, in 1921, to assist fulfil a three-year backlog demand, where 1,703 "Springfield Ghosts" and 1,241 Phantoms were manufactured. When the plant closed in 1931, it had manufactured a total of 2,944 automobiles. In the aftermath Of World war I, Rolls-Royce prevented attempts to combine British automotive manufacturing. Rolls-Royce introduced the smaller, more affordable Twenty in 1922 in reaction to falling sales of the 40/50 Silver Ghost amid a brief but significant post-war economic depression.

Rolls Royce Silver Dawn 1954
1954 Rolls Royce Silver Dawn

Rolls-Royce purchased Bentley, a small sports/racing automaker and prospective rival, in 1931, when the latter's finances were unable to withstand the advent of the Great Depression. Rolls-Royce halted the manufacture of the new Bentley 8 Litre, which was threatening Phantom sales, and sold all remaining Bentley assets, relying solely on the Bentley name and reputation.

After two years of development, Rolls-Royce unveiled the Bentley 3.5 Litre, a new and distinct medium-size Bentley.  It was marketed as "the silent sports car", very much in the Rolls-Royce tradition. This aided the Sales Department since previous Bentley consumers were sceptical that the new Crewe Bentley could outperform its illustrious forefathers.

An agreement was struck in 1940 with the Packard Motor Car Company in Detroit, Michigan, for the production of Merlin aero-engines in the United States for World War II. The Cromwell tank's manufacture was focused on aviation engines, although a variant of the Merlin engine known as the Meteor was developed. Following the war, Rolls-Royce and Bentley automobile production was shifted to Crewe in 1946, where they began to build entire Rolls-Royce and Bentley automobiles. Previously, they just built the chassis and left the bodywork to specialised coachbuilders. In 1939, Rolls-Royce purchased the remaining shares of Park Ward Limited, bringing one of the specialist coachbuilders in-house. Since 1936, Park Ward Small has been producing limited quantities of all-metal saloon bodywork on Bentley chassis in collaboration with Rolls-Royce.

Rolls Royce Camargue 1980
1980 Rolls Royce Camargue

In 1959, Rolls-Royce acquired coachbuilder H J Mulliner, and the two firms amalgamated to create H J Mulliner Park Ward. Luxury autos did not fit the new postwar austere ethos. Rolls-Royce began manufacturing diesel engines in 1951, after designing and manufacturing the C series diesel engine family since 1948. By 1955, it had produced diesel engines for use in automobiles, railways, industry, earth-moving equipment, and ships.

On April 25, 1971, two and a half months after Rolls-Royce was put in receivership, Rolls-Royce Motors Limited was created. It reopened for business in April 1971, under the administration of the receiver, manufacturing motor cars, diesel and petrol engines, coachwork, and other items previously made by Rolls-automobile Royce's and diesel departments, as well as Mulliner Park Ward. It is still subcontracting precision engineering projects. It bought the complete operations and resources of Rolls-Royce and Mulliner Park Ward's vehicle and diesel divisions in June 1971. The allowed uses of Rolls-Royce Motors' multiple Rolls-Royce trademarks were very carefully stated.

Rolls-Royce Motors employed 5,855 employees in the car division and 2,311 people in the diesel sector by the end of 1972, for a total of 8,166 people in the United Kingdom. In May 1973, it was sold to Rolls-Royce Motors Holdings Limited in preparation for its public IPO. Although Vickers sold Rolls-Royce Motor Cars to Volkswagen in 1998, BMW retains the rights to the name and mark for use on Rolls-Royce automobiles, having bought the rights from Rolls-Royce plc for £40 million in 1998.


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