LONDON, March 30: Imagine Big Mac as anything but American. It's tough. Or Rolls Royce as anything but British. It's tougher. But these are the toughest days -- so Rolls Royce is not British any longer. It's been sold to the Germans.Germany's BMW confirmed today that it would pay 340 million pounds ($ 572 million) to take over Rolls Royce Motor Cars from Vickers Plc. Vickers announced earlier this morning that it would sell the carmaker to BMW after considering a number of proposals, which included a bid from Germany's Volkswagen. One consideration was the fact that BMW has been making Rolls Royce engines for the last several years.
It's much more than a corporate takeover -- it involves the imperial legacy of a country which ruled the waves. For most of the twentieth century, the car, which stood for luxury and excellence in manufacturing was synonymous with Britain. It exemplified Britain's style, its engineering excellence, its class divisions and its place in the world.
Even as Britain's influencein the world and the dominance of its manufacturing sector declined and every other giant of the British car industry -- Vauxhall, Rover and Jaguar was taken over by Americans, Germans and Japanese, the Rolls remained British. It was rumoured that even Margaret Thatcher could not bear to see Rolls sold to a "foreigner".
However, after today, all that remains of that certain period of British dominance is the Royal family.
Rolls Royce's parent company, the Aeroplane Engine Makers went bust in 1974. The car manufacturing operation was bought out by the defence group Vickers in 1980. The recession of the early '80s hit car sales hard and it took eight years for Rolls Royce to recover sales levels. During this time the company scaled down its operation and sacked 1,700 workers at its factory in Crewe in northwest England, and effectively closed down its factory in North London. UK sales, which dipped to 513 in 1991, recovered to 638 by 1996 and reached 878 last year.
The Rolls Royce was the product of oneof the most famous partnerships of money and engineering. It began in 1904 when the Manchester engineer Henry Royce met Charles Rolls, a millionaire's son. The rich man's son, Charles, had a passion for the "new-fangled" horseless carriages, prototypes of the modern car, which had appeared a few years earlier. He wanted Henry to build him a new series of specially designed cars. Rolls-Royce was formed in 1906, selling what they described as "the best six-cylinder car in the world".
Their first model went on to the market for 395 pounds. Through this century, a Rolls has been the ultimate symbol of luxury, success and most definitely excess. Rolls-Royce has been the object of desire for the rich and the powerful -- the maharajahs, dictators, oil sheikhs, film or pop stars, money-spinning godmen, or upstart businessmen.
It still is. The car retains its reputation as a symbol of luxury and high living. This is in part because of its price and the feeling that those who can afford it, get what they pay for.Until now the Rolls Royce has possibly been the most completely "hand-built" cars in the world.
Its seats are covered with the finest Scandinavian leather, its carpets are hand cut and made of pure new wool, its door capping and dashboards are made from Italian walnut specially grown for the company and it is said that each dashboard veneer is numbered so it can be matched to the same walnut log if damaged. Everything from the chassis to the paint work is produced through labour-intensive processes to exacting standards.
And so, from tomorrow, Rolls Royce will be another feather in the cap of German engineering.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
