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).
Design of a luggage grid and a rear apron for a car.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 13\6\ 06-page35 | |
| Date | 14th August 1930 | |
| -2- Da{Bernard Day - Chassis Design}/Evl/M14.8.30 contd. one sliding over the guard rail and damaging the back panel. If the guard is of the hinged type it is not sufficiently for it to be held up by a friction hinge but it must be locked in position so that when the straps retaining the luggage are passed round it, on accelerating the luggage does not slide backwards. The folded arm type of grid as shewn in the photo-graphs of the American P.1, admittedly looks very neat, but it will be seen that it does not fulfil Sales requirements. It is impossible to make it having a folding double barred guard rail 14" high, a grid 22" long, having 4 or 5 cross bars. We have discussed this matter with R.{Sir Henry Royce} and he has suggested that we should make a grid as shewn in the sketch, and also a folding arm grid on the lines of the American, to be offered for sale to those customers who only sometimes wish to carry a trunk at the back of a maximum bodied P.2. He is not at all pleased with the idea of making it easy for the customer to make an elegant job of the back of our car when no spare wheel is carried at the rear. (4) REAR APRON. It was not quite clear from our interview whether you wished us to design and standardise a rear apron, or whether we should let the coachbuilders make this. We are strongly opposed to a rear apron on account of the noise and fumes being trapped, and finally leaking into the body. The petrol tank was lifted up and made to come flush with the top flange of the frame so that it itself could be the apron. We have already done a special petrol tank for type 4, as used on the cars for Soviet Russia, which extends to the rear cross tube. We prefer however, to use the standard tank and an apron on the grounds that we know two types of petrol tank would be very expensive. At the present we are actually working on the designs of the two types of luggage grid. Da{Bernard Day - Chassis Design}/Ev.{Ivan Evernden - coachwork} | ||