21 Fascinating Things You Didn’t Know About the Rolls-Royce

There’s one thing everyone knows about Rolls-Royce; it is expensive. Very expensive. However, there are a few other things you didn’t know about the Rolls-Royce and that’s what I’ll be telling you today. 

1. The hood ornament decoration of Rolls-Royce is called the ‘spirit of ecstasy’. This figurine was made in honour of John Walter’s mistress. The special thing about the Spirit Of Ecstasy logo is that no one can break or steal it because whenever someone tries to do it automatically hides inside the bonnet.  At the time of an accident, this logo automatically goes inside the front grille. This company does this in honour of this logo. 

2. The logo on Rolls-Royce wheels always remains completely upright. That’s because each official Rolls-Royce rim features a special gyroscopic mechanism that stops the centre cap from rotating, thus ensuring the iconic RR monogram remains upright no matter what. This means, that even while in motion, the world will know you drive a Rolls-Royce.

3. You can send your chauffeur to a Rolls-Royce driving school. The best place to seat in a Rolls-Royce is the backseat, hence you will need a driver and Rolls-Royce has a special driving school. The curriculum trains drivers on how to open and close doors without leaving fingerprints, how to brake without moving the passengers’ heads, and how to read and drive a road for optimal smoothness. This is really fancy. 

4. Sultan Hassanal Brunei owns 500 Rolls-Royces- the largest collection of its kind in the world. During the 1990s, his family accounted for almost half of all Rolls-Royce purchases. His entire car collection is believed to be worth around $4billion. In Nigeria, it is said that Otunba Subomi Balogun the founder of First City Monument Bank (FCMB) owns 11 Rolls-Royce and that is the highest number owned by a Nigerian. 

5. It will interest you to know that about 65% of Rolls-Royce is still on the road. This means over half of the cars made and sold by Rolls-Royce are still being driven to date. Now, that’s a massive success for the company. 

6. Over the past 18 years (since 2003), Mark Court has drawn the stripes on all Rolls-Royce cars and he has done this using his hands and a paintbrush made of real human hair. If a customer buys a Rolls-Royce and does not want the stripes on it at the point of purchase but later, the customer decides to get the stripes, Mark Court will have to travel to wherever the customer is to draw the stripes. 

7. Henry Royce spent two decades creating all manner of mechanical and electrical inventions before deciding to focus his energy on the automobile in 1904. The English engineer was convinced he could build far finer cars than those being built on the other side of the Channel in France (which he eventually did), and was able to persuade his fellow countryman Charles Rolls he could do so. Two years later, in 1906, the duo partnered to launch Rolls-Royce and the rest is automotive history.

8. The Ghost (a model of Rolls-Royce) is soundless. You almost wouldn’t hear the sound of the engine if you ride in it. To do this, engineers came up with a new “Formula of Serenity,” which involved equipping the car with a rigid aluminium space frame that conducts less noise. Then they packed the car’s roof, trunk and floor with 220 pounds of sound-absorbing materials. The result is a ride so quiet and smooth you just might forget you’re in the back seat of a car.

9. The leather on the seat of a Rolls-Royce is made using the skin of 8 bulls. This luxurious leather should not have a single spot and that is why bulls are used instead of the usual cattle. 

10. The oldest Rolls-Royce which originally cost £395 was sold for £3.600 000 to a private collector by Bonham’s auctioneers in December 2007. That amount in today’s Naira is N1,573,249,824.

11. A Rolls-Royce is painted with at least 7 layers of coat and sometimes you could have up to 23 layers of coating which equates to about 45 kilograms in weight of the just coat.

12. Every Rolls-Royce engine is run for seven hours on full throttle before installation and each car is test-driven for hundreds of miles over varying road surfaces.

13. The best selling Rolls-Royce models are; Phantom, Ghost, Wraith and Cullinan.

14. The logo RR was changed from the colour red to black when Sir Henry Royce died in 1933.

15. Rolls-Royce has a palette of 44,000 plus colours. So everyone gets a customised colour and if someone else wants a replica of your colours, Rolls-Royce asks for your permission before the colour can be replicated. Talk about copyright!

16. Rolls-Royce runs on foam-filled tyres which reduces the noise of the road by 9 decibels. They are willing to go the whole length to ensure you have a noiseless ride.

17. The most expensive Rolls-Royce ever built was the Sweptail. It is the result of over four years of work and it costs 13 million dollars. 

18. You can add personalised features to your Rolls-Royce. Once, a customer provided a kilogram of diamonds to be crushed and infused in the paint so as to give the car a unique shine. 

19. The average age of a Rolls-Royce owner is in the late 50s to mid-40s. So, the stinkingly rich people who purchase a Rolls-Royce are not so old. Actually, they are young.

20. Apart from producing cars, Rolls-Royce produces the fastest aircraft. The battery-powered aircraft recently hit a top speed of 387 mph in testing, making it not just the fastest electric plane but the fastest electric vehicle, period.

21. The major and probably the only reason Rolls-Royce are expensive is that they are luxurious. Apart from the air of luxury a Rolls-Royce gives, a Mercedes Benz or a Bentley can do better in comparison to a Rolls-Royce. 

I hope you thoroughly enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it. Above all, I hope the facts are fascinating.