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).
Impracticality and limited market potential of the Paulin Bentley.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 161\1\ scan0198 | |
| Date | 27th September 1938 guessed | |
| To Hs.{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair} from Sg{Arthur F. Sidgreaves - MD}; Copy to EY.Rm.{William Robotham - Chief Engineer} re Paulin Bentley. Sg{Arthur F. Sidgreaves - MD}10/E26938 This arrived this morning and we have had a look at it. Punt is bringing it straight up to Derby as I understand you want to do some work on it, try the HP on the dynamometer and take some tests at Brooklands. Our impression of the car here is that it would have a very limited demand in this country. I hope you will have a good look at it yourself and sit in it and drive it, test the visibility or lack of it, the headroom ditto, the luggage accommodation which is practically non-existent etc. It seems to me that we have really got back to where we were in 1933 when certain people were saying that we could not sell the Bentley unless it had 100 miles an hour performance and because of this we built what was regarded as a short of showroom model to indicate what could be done if people wanted 100 miles an hour. The car was quite impractical and there were no sales for a duplicate. Punt's impression bringing it up from Folkestone yesterday was that it was quite impractical in this country. What I think is much more important to the business than worrying about this sort of thing is todo everything in our power to improve the performance of our existing cars. Sg.{Arthur F. Sidgreaves - MD} | ||