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Charles Stewart Rolls, third son of Lord Llangattock, ran a successful business selling horseless carriages to the nobility and gentry. He, like many people, had experienced the faults of early French cars, having owned a Peugeot. Trading as C.S. Rolls & Co. In London’s West End, he heard of Henry Royce’s new machine, and arranged a meeting with him at the Midland Hotel in Manchester. The resultant partnership gave Rolls exclusive selling rights to the Royce car. Royce produced five different cars: a 10 horsepower, another with similar chassis and engine, a 15 and 20 horsepower, and a 30 horsepower six cylinder model for the Paris show held in the December of 1904. That same month, the two men agreed that the cars would henceforth be made and sold as the new Rolls Royce. The legend had begun. The third man in the partnership, universally known as the hyphen in Rolls-Royce cars, was Claude Johnson, first secretary of the Royal Automobile Club, a shrewd businessman and publicist who married the genius of Royce, the perfectionist engineer, to the sales skills of the aristocratic Rolls. As well as being a keen motorist and racing driver, Rolls was a pioneering aviator, making the first return crossing of the English Channel. He was killed at a flying display in Bournemouth on July 12, 1910. It was only a year later that Royce, ill from overwork, left his factory for ever, and worked from the drawing offices in one of his two homes; one at Canadel-sur-Mer on the French Riviera and the other at West Wittering on the Sussex coast. His wife left him soon after, and his nurse, Ethel Aubin, sustained the great man, a semi invalid from then on, until his death on April 22, 1933. Legend has it that the colour of the enamel backing on the Rolls Royce cars for sale badges was changed from red to black because of his death, but the truth is that he had decided on the change a month earlier, believing the red to clash with some of the colour finishes being used by coachbuilders. Up to 1949 Rolls sold only chassis, the bodies being supplied by coachbuilders. The distinctive Rolls Royce Ghost radiator was designed by Royce in the early days, and although it appears to consist of flat surfaces, it is in fact made up of slightly convex ones, making it much more difficult and expensive to manufacture. Royce, however, always did things in what he considered to be the right way irrespective of cost, even in the early 1900s when he had trouble finding his men’s wages at the end of the week. Rolls had helped the infant company through successful competition in motor racing, in which the company itself was involved for the first and last time, when Charles Rolls ran in the TT. This was in 1905, when Rolls wrecked his gearbox while trying to get back into gear, having coasted down a hill. Of course he blamed someone else. Charles Rolls also took two cars on a record attempt to Monte Carlo and back.