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).
Purchase and evaluation of an all-steel car body.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 117\1\ scan0014 | |
| Date | 18th October 1930 | |
| HS{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair} 57/1650 XG 85 To DA{Bernard Day - Chassis Design}/EV{Ivan Evernden - coachwork} from Eg. All-Steel Bodies. SgS0/E18.10.30 Copy to Mr. C.C. Gen.File.No.Hdf.for BHG. I duly received DA{Bernard Day - Chassis Design}/EV{Ivan Evernden - coachwork}1/E4.10.30 but have been unable to reply earlier owing to a visit to the Paris Show etc. I have now had an opportunity of giving consideration to the matter. I am very anxious that we should obtain all the experience possible with all-steel bodies but it is difficult to believe that the right way to do this is to buy a body such as that described on page 2 of your memo. and fit it to a 25 HP car. The body is admittedly not altogether suitable for the chassis. It is too high. The lines of it are such as I gather we should all cordially dislike and we should, therefore, probably be prejudiced against it in consequence. The price seems absurd when one knows the price at which one can buy a complete car of the American type with a similar sort of body. We should have to pay £33 1/3% duty on the body into England and we should then have to pay the Pressed Steel Body Company of Cowley for mounting and fitting it, painting and upholstering it etc. Assuming the body costs £600, the total cost would not be less than £1000, and in addition to that we should probably have to make a new 20/25 chassis second-hand and the body would eventually have to be scrapped. I gather that the only object in putting forward this suggestion is to enable us to gain experience but surely an even more satisfactory and much less expensive method of gaining experience with an all-steel body would be to buy a complete car with an all-steel body and if necessary run it intensively with a view to seeing whether it stands up etc. If, as I gather from the second paragraph of Page 2, the suggestion is that the Cowley people will be willing to make us up bodies and, therefore, it is their type of | ||