Rolls owners rev up for New Zealand celebration

Rolls-Royce owners kicked off a celebration of the luxury car’s centenary today with a dinner in New Zealand.

About 50 of the company’s cars are to begin a world tour tomorrow morning, which will take them through New Zealand, Australia, Europe and the United States over the course of the year.

The drivers are celebrating the 100th anniversary of May 4, 1904, when car dealer Charles Royce met engineer Henry Rolls at Manchester’s Midland Hotel to discuss a business partnership.

The first Rolls-Royce car, the Silver Ghost, was produced in 1907.

Cars taking part in the world tour include a 1912 Silver Ghost and a 1923 Silver Ghost built for the Prince of Wales (later British King Edward VIII who abdicated his throne), and used as a farm car on hunting trips by the Royal family.

Sunday saw 62 gleaming “Rollers” parked in Auckland, surrounded by thousands of people.

Afterward, some 200 owners, aficionados and admirers held a special commemorative dinner at an upmarket Auckland hotel.

“There’s a huge amount of dollars down in the hotel’s car park at the moment,” New Zealand Rolls-Royce and Bentley Club spokesman Rod Newport said.

He said the 17-day New Zealand leg of the world tour was ”not just a tour but a celebration” of a century of the Rolls-Royce commitment to quality motoring.

Philip Hall, chief executive of the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation, said the cars produced by the firm ”are works of art”.

“Royce’s philosophy was to do everything as well as you could,” he said last week. “No compromises.”

In recent years the road has not always been smooth for the famously opulent car. This archetypal British product has been German-owned since 1998, when Volkswagen outbid BMW to buy the British carmaker, its factory at Crew in north-west England and the Bentley brand for £479m (€695.6m).