Rolls really was the real deal

THE Honorable Charles Stewart Rolls was one of those larger-than-life characters that, had a mind of his own, couldn’t be bothered with aristocracy and often had his head in the clouds.

He was the third son of a baron and his was a noble family with a strong military tradition, and the rather excellent motto, Celerias et Veritas (speed and truth) – a pretty good slogan for a car company.

Coachbuilding in the pre-WWI period was a specialised business conducted in consultation with clients, so a distinguished chap might buy a rolling chassis for speed and reliability, and then order a custom body suited to the type of expected use.

For something swishy and chauffeur-driven you could get your conveyance with town car bodywork, or tweed-clad sporting types could opt for racy Brooklands-style two seaters.

Or, in the case of Charles Rolls, get something to carry your hot air balloon around.

Yes, Charles Rolls really had a pre-war balloon car.

It was a time when the dawn of aviation and the rise of the motor car were tightly linked, and when Charles Rolls, co-founder of Rolls-Royce, was deeply interested in bags of hot air — just not those who were his cousins.

He was a lanky six foot five (1.95m), smoked like the Flying Scotsman at full speed, and was a vegetarian.

He had almost no time whatsoever for the snobbery of his well-heeled relatives, was acerbic of wit, and was so obsessed with engines that he picked up the nickname “dirty Rolls,” because he was so often covered in oil and grease.

Educated at Eton and Cambridge, he might well have gone on to be a great industrialist.

The third sons of great houses often have quite a lot of time on their hands, as they are not often the chosen heir, but in fact, the Rolls lineage would end with him and his brothers, the eldest of them dying of wounds suffered at the battle of the Somme and Charles’ life cut short by the pursuit of his passions, rather than war.

A racing cyclist while at Cambridge, he bought his first car at the age of 18, having to travel to France to do so.

That car, a Peugeot, is thought to have been the first car in the Cambridge area, and when he drove it back to his family home, it was one of only three such vehicles in Wales.

This was the era of the Locomotive Acts, where top speeds were highly regulated and Rolls co-founded the Automobile Club of Great Britain to campaign for less restrictive roads.

He drove his Peugeot in many early continental races, since racing was not permitted in the UK.

He was something of a daredevil, and in 1903 set the unofficial land speed record, hitting a heady 83 mph (133km/h) in Dublin.

Ireland had less dramatic speed laws at the time.

However, the timing equipment was not properly validated, so his record remained unofficial.

At this time, he also began importing cars from Belgium and France as a way of paying for his car racing.

The meeting with Henry Royce happened on May 4, 1904.

Royce was from a very different background, a commoner who hawked newspapers as a child and was apprenticed at 14 to The Great Northern Railway.

He’d bought an early French automobile second-hand, taken it apart, and made a number of improvements.

Just one month prior, he’d created a two-cylinder car of his own construction, and it was this that captured Rolls’ attention.

They clicked and immediately formed a partnership.

By this time, Rolls was already an accomplished aeronaut.

He was a co-founding member of the Royal Aero Club, and in 1903 had won the Gordon Bennett gold medal for the longest flight time in a balloon.

In 1906, Rolls-Royce presented the model that would cement the company’s early reputation: the 40/50 hp, better known later as the Silver Ghost.

With a durable six-cylinder engine, this model would adventure all over the world, sold to the Maharajahs of India, fighting guerilla tactics in the desert with Lawrence of Arabia, or being pressed into service as an armoured car.

In 1908, Rolls had the 70 hp 40/50 chassis number 60785 sent to the H J Mulliner coachbuilding company, and fitted with a unique body.

Officially a roadster style, it featured a large rear platform for storing the wicker basket of a small hot air balloon, and even had patent leather flexible rear fenders to make loading and unloading the basket much easier.

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It quickly picked up the unofficial name of the Balloon Car.

It was used as a support vehicle in several flights, but Rolls himself soon turned away from ballooning to proper flying.

He hosted the Wright brothers on a visit to the UK, and later bought a Wright Flyer, racking up more than 200 sorties in short order.

In 1910, he became the first person to overfly the English channel, there-and-back again, landing in Dover to cheering throngs of thousands.

Then, just one month later, his fragile biplane disintegrated in mid-air during a flying competition and plunged to earth.

Rolls was killed instantly, the first Briton to die because of an aircraft crash, and one of only about a dozen aviation pioneers to have lost their life at the time.

The Balloon Car itself was sold on, but went missing in the early 1920s.

It may be lurking in a shed somewhere in the UK, waiting to be found.

In the meantime, various replicas have been built of it, the most faithful of them commissioned by noted Rolls-Royce collector Millard Newman.

For a time, one of these was on display at the Harrah collection in Reno, Nevada.

Rolls-Royce itself went into the aviation business when WWI broke out in 1914 and today produces many jet engines for the commercial aviation industry.