ROLLS-ROYCE CELEBRATES THE OPENING OF THE SUMMER SEASON AT THE HURLINGHAM CLUB – AutoMart Canada

• 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 20^th 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.