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).
Reviewing automotive technologies from a show and discussing the company's experimental and production strategies.
| Identifier | Morton\M16\ img016 | |
| Date | 19th July 1917 | |
| Contd. -2- to be produced in quantity. Older model much more reason- able, but still not a car for silence, restfulness, and everyday use. Except that these people have advertised themselves, I see little merit in their production from a utility point of view. (10) Oil-operated four wheel brake (Rolland Pilain) as used on Duesenberg hydraulic construction, and difficult to understand the reason for adopting such a scheme, except novelty and expediency, that certainly will not be found suitable for everyday use. (11) One must not suppose that what they see at the Show is a successful finished production, but generally something far less carefully worked out and as untested as our own fresh experimental productions would be. (12) Vulcan - Mr. Elliott has brought particulars of their new split sleeve valve engine. This seems quite a suicidal policy. They are abandoning the orthodox well tried poppet valve engine for a freak novelty of their own, which looks as if it will result in their downfall, like so many others on similar lines. (13) Very many attempts at overhead valves with overhead camshaft British and Continental. There is no reason why the whole of these will not prove noisy engines, whereas with the pre- cautions we have introduced our overhead valve push rod engine is more silent than our present side-by-side (i.e. referring to valve gear). (14) It is thought by many that there was nothing at the Show that combined all the new points specially dealt with in G.ll. and I cannot come to any definite conclusion which chassis should be purchased for comparison, without knowing more about their behaviour on the road, etc. (15) R.R. are very careful not to waste time on the various novel- ties offered to them and produced by their engineers, unless they see good hope of success, but it must not be supposed that no novelties are produced. We could easily fill twenty to thirty times our experimental department's capacity on schemes which there is about one chance of their being a success to 1,000 that would be worthless. (16) I write (15) because one might think the R.R. were unpro- ductive of novelties, but when it is thought of the tens of thousands of novelties that come and go for one which stays, one will see how fairly certain one should be before ventur- ing on novelty productions, and pioneer work, especially in these times of scarcity of money. R.{Sir Henry Royce} R.R. 199 (250T) (SD676 19-7-17) (MP180865) | ||