Rolls-Royce Motor Cars London kicks off the Summer Season, serving a gentle presence at the Giorgio Armani Tennis Classic at The Hurlingham Club, West London
Historic location in the annals of Rolls-Royce with enduring links to The Hon. Charles Stewart Rolls
Part of a series of carefully selected occasions for clients and guests throughout the summer
“At Rolls-Royce, we strive to offer our clients unique experiences and encounters, in pinnacle enclaves and settings that reflect their tastes, lifestyles and interests. As one of Britain’s most prestigious private members’ clubs, The Hurlingham Club is a perfect fit; its unrivalled facilities, magnificent sporting occasions and London location, which is home to many of our clients, only add to its appeal. It’s also a place with real meaning for Rolls-Royce, indelibly associated with the marque’s co-founder, The Hon. Charles Stewart Rolls and his own remarkable sporting exploits at the dawn of the 20th Century. It is the perfect beginning to what promises to be another glorious Summer Season for Rolls-Royce and our clients.” Boris Weletzky, Regional Director, United Kingdom, Europe and Central Asia, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Rolls-Royce Motor Cars London marks the opening of the Summer Season with its return to the Giorgio Armani Tennis Classic at The Hurlingham Club in West London this week. It is the first in a series of high society occasions in which Rolls-Royce will serve a gentle presence across London and further afield in Britain during the summer months.First held in 1994, the Giorgio Armani Tennis Classic is one of the world’s most prestigious exhibition tournaments. Played on The Hurlingham Club’s sublime grass courts, it has long been used by many ATP players to polish their skills ahead of the start of the Wimbledon Championships the following week.For the duration of the tournament, Rolls-Royce clients will delight in a carefully curated experience, set in the stunning 42-acre location on the River Thames in Fulham.Since its foundation in 1869, the Hurlingham Club has represented the apex of sporting and social life, and is indelibly linked with exclusive and glamorous summer pursuits. In 1873, it published the official rules of polo, and was the venue for ‘the game of kings’ at the 1908 Summer Olympics. While polo is no longer played there, Hurlingham remains its spiritual home and gives its name to the British sport’s governing body. The Club is still, however, the world centre for another classic summer game, croquet, regularly hosting top-ranking international tournaments on its immaculate lawns.THE ROLLS-ROYCE CONNECTION The Club offers precisely the kind of environment and ambiance in which the marque’s co-founder, The Hon. Charles Stewart Rolls, would have felt entirely at home. Aristocratic, well-connected and wealthy, he was also daring and insatiably competitive. He raced bicycles as a student at Cambridge, then motor cars; and by the time he turned 30, he had enthusiastically embraced the latest craze sweeping his social stratum, ballooning, for which Hurlingham had quickly become the central hub in Britain.The attractions for an audacious, pioneering spirit like Rolls, who had successfully raced every available innovation since his youth, were obvious. Ballooning was new, adventurous, ripe for record-setting and, of course, potentially extremely dangerous. The most obvious hazards were in flight, when a shift in the wind could set the balloon on a collision course, with the hapless pilot essentially powerless to take evasive action. Rolls himself had close calls with a factory chimney near his family home in Monmouth, and a gasholder at Battersea, in 1906; and when flying from Hurlingham, there was the ever-present possibility of becoming entangled with a tree on take-off.Other perils awaited the pilot on landing. One summer day, Rolls disrupted a cricket match by coming to earth on the pitch, and even though the outraged players were eventually pacified, the fragile balloon suffered grave damage from their spiked cricket boots.To add further spice to the proceedings, these early balloons were filled not with inert hot air, but with coal gas – a roughly equal mix of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that was both extremely flammable and highly toxic. As the sport’s focal point, Hurlingham had its own dedicated supply via a pipeline installed by the Gas Light & Coke Company in 1908.On 24 June 1908, the Aero Club of the United Kingdom organised a pursuit race, known as a ‘hare and hounds’ and still popular with balloonists today, from The Hurlingham Club grounds. As the ‘hare’, Rolls set off first in his single-occupant balloon ‘The Imp’ and flew to a predetermined spot where he landed and laid out a target on the ground. The pack of 11 ‘hounds’ then followed, in balloons with evocative names including ‘Pegasus’, ‘Valkyrie’ and ‘Enchantress’ (whoever named balloon number 10 ‘Icarus’ clearly had either a poor grasp of mythology or a particularly mordant sense of humour). Their task was to locate the target and attempt to drop a weighted bag onto it from the air: whoever struck closest to the mark received a special cup presented by Rolls himself. The pilots and their passengers – almost all titled and/or military officers and professional people, including a Doctor, a General and a Viscountess – perfectly encapsulate Rolls’ elevated social milieu, and the personal connections on which he built Rolls-Royce’s early success.Balloon racing continued from the Club in 1909; but by 1910, Rolls had moved on to aeroplanes, becoming only the second person in Britain to obtain a pilot’s licence. On 2 June, his first-ever double crossing of the English Channel, flying non-stop from Dover to Calais and back again, made him a national hero. His Wright Flyer, designed by the legendary Wilbur and Orville, was built under license in Britain by Short Brothers, who also produced ‘The Imp’.After the record-breaking 90-minute flight, the aircraft required a major overhaul, so Rolls and his team took it to a hangar at Hounslow Heath airfield, conveniently close to Hurlingham where it was to be put on public display. Sensibly, the team made the trip from Kent at night, having decided that towing an aeroplane behind a motor car on the public highway was ‘probably illegal’. Flying an aeroplane in metropolitan London, on the other hand, was definitely against the law. Typically, this did not stop Rolls attempting a test-flight from Hurlingham: after narrowly avoiding a tree, he was persuaded not to try a second time.The extraordinary pace of development would continue in aviation. Just 61 years after The Hurlingham balloon races, Concorde crossed the Atlantic at twice the speed of sound – powered by engines bearing Rolls’ name.
Spectre: WLTP: Power consumption: 2.6-2.8 mi/kWh / 23.6-22.2 kWh/100km. Electric range 329 mi / 530 km. CO2 emissions 0 g/km.
Ghost: WLTP (combined) CO2 emission: 357-346 g/km; Fuel consumption: 18-18.5 mpg / 15.7-15.3 l/100km.