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).
Report comparing the ride, performance, and pricing of different car models, including the Phantom I, and discussing spring design.
| Identifier | Morton\M18\ img017 | |
| Date | 14th November 1923 guessed | |
| S-W car does not ride badly according to our standards. I find that their jobs are not so as good on the average of our roads. Springfield can show me a car which rides any better. They claim that they have had jobs in that they are to produce such a car to try. The road conditions out here are no different to what we have there and distances being so much greater, the roads which have a thoroughly bad ride sometimes last for hours. My complaint of the riding is not so much that particularly any individual reason. I consider the reason that they strived for over here is because it is the only advantage they claim when trying to persuade a prospect to purchase a Rolls-Royce car. The price of KB-SW delivered to a customer is $16,460. This is more than twice the price he has to pay for a sixteen cylinder Cadillac of similar strength. Practically the only reason they can persuade him to pay the price for our car is that it will give a better ride than on any other car. On the question of performance, we simply cannot make the claim to have any out-standing advantage. An ordinary customer, Ford expects to get the same road comfort he has been promised. There are, however, still a large number of people who are willing to pay the price for one of our cars, and I believe the twelve Phantom I's are giving a much better ride than they have been doing. I find that they are working on the springing problem here on similar lines to what we are doing at Derby. That is, they are increasing the deflection of the springs. They have Phantom I cars running which have ten inch initial deflection. The fact that Springfield can produce their own road springs allows them to comparatively easily make changes and experiments on road springs. There is one other point which has been criticised and that is the acceleration of the car. This is not raised as a serious objection, but some people hold the view that the acceleration is not as good as the Phantom I they are now producing. My own view is that we shall find they are about the same. It may be that they are slightly better. I believe they are using a higher compression ratio than we are, and also slightly lower gear ratio. We, however, going to make comparative tests on the road. are (Continued) | ||