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).
Internal report outlining the reasons for delivering Phantom cars to customers with known faults.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 148\5\ scan0029 | |
| Date | 17th January 1928 guessed | |
| contd :- -2- known to exist before we started to produce a single Phantom; the faults were equally well known when we were delivering the cars. The responsibility of producing the Phantom cars with these faults must be equally shared by the Sales Officials as they passed the car after having those faults pointed out. At that time there were, no doubt, very excellent reasons why the Phantom car had to go into production. CJ. at a Derby Confer- ence considered that the Phantom would have to go into production even if 20% of the new parts had to be replaced. Once it is agreed that the 10,000 miles test in France is no guarantee against free of charge work, one looks for other ways of reducing this charge. We submit that it is entirely wrong to assume that if we could only find more faults with our cars we should reduce the amount of free of charge work to the customer. In our opinion the following are the reasons why cars are delivered to customers with faults :- (1) Because we do not know the fault exists. (2) Because we know the fault exists but do not know how to improve it. (3) Because although we know how to improve it, the design of the new piece is held over for more important work. (4) Because although we have proved that a new piece will overcome the fault, it has not run 10,000 miles. (5) Because although the part has run 10,000 miles and is standardised, the existing stocks must be used up. We appear to concentrate most of our energies on item (1), whereas if the complaints are analysed, it proved that (1) is of the least importance. The Phantom steering is the mo... on the free of charge list. The fau... | ||