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 of competitor cars for analysis and comparing production costs and materials for the 'Peregrine' project.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 179\1\ img094 | |
| Date | 16th November 1923 | |
| HS.{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair} FROM R.{Sir Henry Royce} [REDACTED] re. "PEREGRINE". Referring to your HS{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}2/MJ131131., we at WW. are not in favour of buying a Fiat as being of any assistance with reference to our "Peregrine". We should not expect to find anything on the European continent that would be as useful as the best English or American specimens. The two cars we are inclined to favour are the Sunbeam and Humber. As the latter we can easily get, the Sunbeam seems to be the better car to buy. The reason we say this is that the type of engine is the same as ours (but the size is smaller,) and the specification is very complete and one we should have to follow, and may be a serious competitor as regards choosing suitable materials. We cannot believe we should find anything to help in an Italian car. The enormous difference in cost between purchasing materials for our productions and those of the cheaper makes will undoubtedly be found to be largely due to (1) numbers, (2) our unnecessarily exacting specifications, and (3) RR. reputation for being able and willing to pay high prices. How these 3 things are to be got over must be dealt with by the Production Dept., and I think that WOR.{Arthur Wormald - General Works Manager} had better form a committee of himself, with BY.{R.W. Bailey - Chief Engineer}, ROY.{Sir Henry Royce}, and perhaps RHC.{R. H. Coverley - Production Engineer} Having the Sunbeam and Humber cars to refer to each item can be examined, and an estimate could be made of what these Companies could allow for materials, and a rough allotment made to each section. It will be found that aluminium die castings are probably as cheap as anything for our work where-ever they are applicable because of the saving in machining time, in fact, there is little to be gained from the use of cast iron unless it has some qualities that will simplify or facilitate getting the cars right, such as silence or stiffness. We are very often putting in work to save weight which is far more costly than the saving of cost by the use of cast iron over aluminium. One understands from this that to maintain our strength without an excess of weight we are spending money at greater cost per unit of weight saved than we can save in money per unit of weight lost by the use of cast iron. R.{Sir Henry Royce} | ||