It is now almost a century since the first auspicious meeting took place between two men who, despite quite different backgrounds and temperaments, would combine their talents to create a motorcar... and a legend. Mr. Henry Royce, born in 1863, the son of a miller, was a well-established engineer (his Manchester-based firm, F. H. Royce & Co., manufactured cranes and dynamos) when in the spring of 1904 he was introduced to the Hon. Charles Rolls in Manchester.

They had agreed to discuss an innovation for F. H. Royce & Co. - making motorcars that would be ahead of their time. The aristocratic Hon. Charles S. Rolls, born in 1877, the son of a landowner, was noted at the time as an entrepreneur, as well as an adventurer (in Dublin in 1903 he set a world land speed record of 93mph) and a hot-air balloonist (tragically, he was destined to be one of the earliest casualties of aviation when he died in a flying accident in 1910).

Engineer Royce had focused his unquenchable enthusiasm to improve mechanical things on automobiles. He had firm views on the need for quality and a Victorian fancy for expressing his aims in stirring phrases: "Small things make perfection, but perfection is no small thing," declared Mr. Royce. "Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble," he added. And one of his cannier observations in this vein was to note that "The quality remains long after the price is forgotten." The Hon. Charles Rolls was hugely impressed by the precision he found in Mr. Royce's first, two-cylinder prototype.

It started on the button and progressed with remarkably silent smoothness. What was more, it did not seem to break down with the regularity, which was customary at the time. Charles Rolls appreciated such qualities. He was not himself a professional engineer, but he had acquired a degree in mechanical engineering at Cambridge University and was an accomplished driver. He arranged to borrow the Royce and as soon as he was back in London, rushed round to his business partner, Claude Johnson, and took him on an extended drive to show off its abilities. They were agreed that in the single-minded Mr. Royce they had found an engineering talent to take on the world.

Their first stop was France, where a pioneering Royce went on show at the Paris Salon in early December, 1904. It was a sensation and, two days before Christmas, an historic agreement was signed for Messrs C. S. Rolls and Co. to have exclusive rights to sell Royce cars in Britain, on the understanding that they should henceforth be known by a new name - Rolls-Royce.