14 interesting facts and myths Rolls-Royce confirmed about their cars

The Rolls-Royce brand has always been shrouded in myths and legends passed down from owner to owner or circulated among the prestige motoring connoisseurs of the world.
While some stories and facts have been lost in translation along the way, others have been immortalised in the luxury car maker's identity.

It is believed that the slew of myths and stories about the brand began when it revealed that it fits bespoke commissioned cars with a refrigerator that has a ‘Summer’ and ‘Winter’ cooling modes to ensure that the passenger's beverages are available at the optimum temperature for what ever the season.

To finally set the record straight, Rolls-Royce sent us a long list of confirmed facts and stories about the brand which cover everything from the mystery behind the beautifully straight coachlines, to hidden features inside Rolls-Royce cars. Here are 14 interesting confirmed facts and myths that have defined the modern Rolls-Royce success story.

1. The mechanism that retracts the Spirit of Ecstasy to prevent theft and damage is comprised of 24 unseen linkages and bearings.

2. The Spirit of Ecstasy is so valued by the brand that there is a safe lock on the shop floor containing no more bonnet ornaments than necessary for a single day of production. The code is known only by a small circle of craftspeople.

3. In 2017, the year the car maker launched its eighth Phantom, Bloomberg conducted a study that researched the most mentioned brands in pop music. Rolls-Royce topped the list, beating Ferrari, Hennessy and Rolex.

4. Sommeliers advise that the optimum serving temperatures of non-vintage Champagne is six degrees celsius and vintage Champagnes is 11 degrees celsius. Rolls-Royce fits its motor cars with a bespoke refrigerator that operates two cooling modes, chilling to six degrees and 11 degrees, respectively.

5. The Starlight Headliner is one the brand's most popular bespoke features and is made of 1340 individually hand-woven fiber-optics. Customers can specify a specific constellation which will be verified by a local observatory. In total over 2km of cabling is painstakingly hand-woven to achieve this beautiful design element.

6. One customer asked for the colour of the leather in her bespoke Rolls-Royce to be matched to the red of her Irish Setter. This was achieved with no harm to the dog.

7. The car maker's first showroom in Conduit Street, Mayfair was opened a short step from London’s famous centre of tailoring, Savile Row. Sir Henry Royce and his partner The Honorable Charles Rolls matched the offerings of their neighbours by providing London’s most stylish clients with the automotive equivalent of the finest cloths.

8. The leather that makes its way into every Rolls-Royce car is sourced from only the finest bulls, reared at high-altitude to avoid stretching and insect bites. Blemishes, undetectable to the untrained eye are rejected, with off-cut leather being passed down to the fashion industry. The hides are sourced from the meat industry.

9. It takes 17 days to handcraft the leather elements of a Rolls-Royce interior.

10. To achieve the brand's renowned mirror-like paint finish, at least five layers of paint are applied by the only robots you will find at the Rolls-Royce factory. Any hard-to-reach spots are painted by highly skilled paint experts. In total, the process of applying a flawless exterior finish takes seven days and uses over 100lb (45kg) of paint.

11. The most detailed single piece of embroidery to feature in a Rolls-Royce car is a Peregrine Falcon, the fastest bird in the world. The photo-realistic design consists of nearly 250,000 stitches and took a team of designers, craftspeople, and engineers over one month to develop.

12. The 48 painstakingly crafted wood parts that make up a Phantom interior take 28 days to produce. For the look of a seamless flow of grain throughout the vehicle is ensured by only using wood from one tree for each car.

13. Mark Court is the only person able to hand-apply a perfectly straight Phantom coachline. In total it takes 3 hours per side. He uses special brushes made from ox and squirrel hair to ensure the line is precisely level and a uniform 3mm in width. Mark honed his steady-hand painting pub-signs.

14. A Rolls-Royce is so quiet, Sir Henry Royce ordered the fitting of signs at the factory proclaiming ‘Caution, Silent Cars’.  Modern health and safety dictate that workers maneuvering cars around the Manufacturing Plant must intermittently sound the horn as a warning.

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