1904 Rolls-Royce 10 hp Two-Seater

Such luxury was the equivalent of today’s private jet, a powerful symbol of its owner’s status and forward thinking

by Simon Kidston

The Midland Hotel, Manchester, was the site of a significant meeting in automotive history on May 4, 1904, when the Hon. Charles Rolls arrived by train with his business associate Henry Edmunds, to meet Frederick Henry Royce.

Both parties knew each other by repute and their partnership was to be one of lasting significance in the automotive world. Their backgrounds could not have been more different—Rolls was an aristocrat, a Cambridge graduate who briefly held the world land speed record, wheras Royce was a railway engineer whose fascination with electricity had led him to the auto industry, while inventing the bayonet bulb fitting along the way.

Royce had owned a French-built de Dion and later a Decauville before he decided he could do better and built his own 10-hp, 2-cylinder car, which he launched on April 1, 1904. Henry Edmunds drove this car on the Automobile Club’s Sideslip Trials later that month carrying two reporters and, based on its...