From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Superior silence and ease of use of a competitor's (Napier) gearbox, suggesting investigation.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 23\2\ Scan001 | |
| Date | 24th August 1909 | |
| CJ5/R2499. August 24th, 1909. F.H.R. Astell tells me that he has recently driven a 15 h.p. Napier. He was tremendously struck with the gear box. He says that the first and second gears were as silent as the direct drive and that it was quite impossible to make a mistake in changing gears even if one tried to do so. You will remember that my impression of the 60h.p. and the 30h.p. Napier was that the gear boxes were far and away superior to anything that I had before experienced and I believe now that they are better than the gear boxes on our 1100 series. I think you will agree that it is very important that Napiers should not have gear boxes which are more silent or change gears which are more easy than ours unless the silence and ease of change have been arrived at by the sacrifice of considerable efficiency or durability. My suggestion is that it is our duty to find out how the silence and ease of change have been arrived at. I suppose the ease of change has come about by the plate clutch. If Clarke cannot or will not inform us how the silence has been arrived at, I suggest that we should do well to buy a Napier car in order to ascertain, rather than to allow Napiers to be superior to us so far as gear box silence is concerned. C.J. [Handwritten text on left margin]: x 437 from plate Clutch and banging | ||