Rolls-Royce PLC

Rolls-Royce PLC, major British manufacturer of aircraft engines, marine propulsion systems, and power-generation systems. Noted for much of the 20th century as a maker of luxury automobiles, the company was separated from its car-making operations and nationalized following bankruptcy in 1971. It returned to the private sector in 1987. Headquarters are in London.

Rolls-Royce PLC’s aerospace segment produces an extensive line of civilian and military aircraft engines, both alone and in joint ventures with companies in Europe, the United States, and Japan. Major products include the Trent and RB211 turbofan families (see jet engine) used on Boeing, Airbus, and Tupolev aircraft and the EJ200 turbofan developed for the Eurofighter Typhoon. Rolls-Royce is the world’s leading supplier of marine propulsion equipment. Its products and services range from complete ship design to integrated propulsion, maneuvering, and positioning systems and deck machinery. Other nonaerospace products include aerospace-derived gas turbines for the oil and gas industries and power-generation plants and nuclear power systems for the Royal Navy.
The English engineer Frederick Henry Royce established F.H. Royce and Co. in 1884 (renamed Royce Ltd. in 1899) to manufacture dynamos, electric motors, and electric cranes. He built his first motor car in early 1904. Soon thereafter he met Charles Stewart Rolls, whose company, C.S. Rolls and Co. (founded in 1902), sold quality cars. The two men forged a business alliance in which Rolls would have the exclusive right to sell Royce’s cars, which would bear the name Rolls-Royce. The success of the cars led to the formation of Rolls-Royce Ltd. in 1906 and the launch of its six-cylinder “40/50 hp” automobile. Later named the Silver Ghost (produced from 1907–25), the automobile earned a reputation as the “best car in the world” by the British motoring press. The company’s success continued with such descendant models as the Twenty (1922–29), the several Phantoms (begun in 1925 and specially made for heads of state from 1949 onward), the Silver Wraith (introduced in 1947), and the Silver Dawn (1949) and, later, with models that included the Silver Cloud (1955), Silver Shadow (1965), and Silver Seraph (1998). In 1931 Rolls-Royce acquired Bentley Motors Ltd. (founded in 1920 by Walter Owen Bentley), a maker of fine cars, whose models thereafter gradually took on mechanical and design characteristics identical, except for minor details, to those of the Rolls-Royce line. For decades Rolls-Royce produced only the chassis and engines for its cars, leaving it to expert coach builders to construct coachwork to individual customer requirements. In 1939 it began making entire cars.

In 1914 Rolls-Royce produced its first aircraft engine, the Eagle. Its water-cooled Merlin engine, introduced on the eve of World War II, powered many aircraft (including the Supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane) and became one of the most successful piston engines of that war. In the early 1940s, building on the pioneering jet propulsion work of English aviation engineer Frank Whittle, Rolls-Royce designed the Welland, the first jet engine to enter military service (in the Gloster Meteor in 1944). In 1953 the company’s Dart turboprop engine, developed for the Vickers-Armstrongs Viscount, was the first turboprop to enter commercial service. In 1966 Rolls-Royce acquired Bristol Siddeley Engines (created in 1959 through the merger of Bristol Aero Engines and Armstrong Siddeley Motors), which at that time was developing the Pegasus vectored-thrust engine for the Harrier vertical/short-takeoff-and-landing jet fighter and the Olympus engine (with France’s SNECMA) for the Concorde supersonic airliner. Eventually Rolls-Royce’s jet-engine operations came to constitute, by far, the largest portion of the company in terms of sales.

In the late 1960s Rolls-Royce undertook development of a new, powerful jet engine, the RB211. In order to beat its competitor General Electric, the company agreed to a fixed-price contract with Lockheed Aircraft Corporation (see Lockheed Martin Corporation) to supply the RB211 turbofan for Lockheed’s L-1011 TriStar wide-body airliner. Rolls-Royce management made several miscalculations in the process, including a vast underestimation of the engine’s development costs, which led the company to bankruptcy in February 1971. As a consequence, Rolls-Royce was nationalized, and the British government met the company’s financial obligations. It subsequently was restructured into two separate entities: Rolls-Royce Ltd., comprising its jet-engine operations, was established in 1971 and became a government-owned corporation; Rolls-Royce Motor Holdings Limited, comprising the automobile and diesel-engine operations, was created in 1973 and returned to private stockholders. In 1980 Rolls-Royce Motor Holdings Limited was acquired by Vickers Ltd., becoming a subsidiary of the latter. A British manufacturing and engineering company with a long history as a defense contractor, Vickers was converted to a public limited company the following year. In 1983 Rolls-Royce Ltd. joined with four other European, American, and Japanese companies in the International Aero Engines consortium to develop the V2500 turbofan engine for short- to medium-range jetliners.

In 1987 the British government privatized Rolls-Royce Ltd. by selling the company’s shares to private investors; the name was subsequently changed to Rolls-Royce PLC. Three years later the company joined with the German carmaker BMW AG (Bayerische Motoren Werke AG) in a consortium to build small-to-medium jet engines. In 2000 it took full control of the joint venture; in return, BMW received a 10 percent stake in the parent company. In 1995 Rolls-Royce PLC expanded its aircraft propulsion activities through the acquisition of Allison Engine Company (founded in 1915), an American maker of gas-turbine engines for aviation, industrial, and marine applications. In 1999 the company became a global leader in marine power systems on its acquisition of Vickers PLC, a maker of maritime propulsion and stabilization systems, turbine components, and defense systems.

In 1997, after Vickers announced its intention to sell its Rolls-Royce automobile subsidiary, two German carmakers, Volkswagen AG and BMW AG, submitted rival bids. Although Vickers’s shareholders favoured a purchase by Volkswagen, engine maker Rolls-Royce PLC, which held the rights to the Rolls-Royce brand name and logo (under an agreement signed before Vickers took control of the luxury-car maker), supported a sale to BMW. In a novel agreement made the next year, Volkswagen acquired the Rolls-Royce automobile operations from Vickers, while BMW acquired all rights to the name Rolls-Royce with respect to cars. BMW thereupon granted Volkswagen a license to make and sell automobiles under the Rolls-Royce brand until the end of 2002, after which BMW would make cars with the Rolls-Royce name in a new factory. Volkswagen, which acquired the original factory in Crewe, England, established Rolls-Royce & Bentley Motor Cars Ltd. as a subsidiary to focus on development of the Bentley car line, which accounted for more than half of sales.