14 fascinating Rolls-Royce facts that'll blow you away!

Upon announcing that Rolls-Royce equips its motor cars with a refrigerator that has two cooling modes: ‘Summer’ and ‘Winter’, thus ensuring occupants’ beverages are delivered at the optimum temperature for the relevant season, the marque has witnessed significant interest in the myths and legends that endear so many to the brand. In this spirit, the time is now to reveal more of the truths that have defined the modern Rolls-Royce success story. For instance, did you know that the mechanism that retracts the Spirit of Ecstasy to prevent theft and damage is comprised of 24 unseen linkages and bearings?

Or that 4,500 automated electronic test and commissioning sequences are executed during assembly to ensure the car is crafted to its correct specification? A further 3,500 take-place once the car is finished. A car must pass every test before it is permitted to leave the factory.

To achieve the marque’s mirror-like finish, 5 layers of paint are applied by the only robots you will find at the Home of Rolls-Royce. Any hard-to-reach spots are painted by highly skilled paint experts. In total the process of applying a flawless exterior finish takes seven days and uses over 100lb of paint.

Paint quality is checked by the most sophisticated measuring tool in the world: the human eye. If a car does not meet with the approval of the marque’s notoriously fastidious auditors, it will be scrapped.

It takes 17 days to hand-craft the leather elements of a Rolls-Royce interior.

Engineers will analyse cavities with an endoscope during monsoon water tests to ensure no moisture ingress. Should a car fail this test it will be scrapped.

A Rolls-Royce is so quiet, Sir Henry Royce ordered the fitting of signs at the factory proclaiming ‘Caution, Silent Cars’. Modern health and safety dictates that craftspeople maneuvering cars around the Manufacturing Plant must intermittently sound the horn as a warning.

A Rolls-Royce rides on a 16-litre air cushion married to dampers and springs that dynamically adjust themselves every five milliseconds to deliver the marque’s sovereign magic carpet ride.

While test driving a Rolls-Royce Dawn, an American journalist drove through an earthquake that measured 3.6 on the Richter scale, followed by an aftershock that measured 2.6 on the Richter scale. Owing to the marque’s hallmark magic carpet ride, he was unaware of this until the following morning.

Rolls-Royce’s craftspeople have been drawn from a variety of industries including; make-up artists, tattooists, military tailoring and even a former parliamentary red box maker.

A tailor made heat station brings every Rolls-Royce body to an exact temperature of 25 degrees Celsius to ensure that the rubber seal between the sunroof and the body is perfectly mated, this eliminates any road and wind noises over many years of driving.

At 112kph, a Rolls-Royce still has 90 per cent of its power left in reserve.

A sensor within the Gallery Clean Room continually measures the particle concentration in microns – an alert is sent if particles are detected at a size larger than 0.001 of a micron. The width of a human hair is between 50-100 microns in diameter.

The Spirit of Ecstasy is so valued by the marque that there is a safe lock on the shop floor containing no more mascots than the necessary for one day of production. The code is known only by a small circle of craftspeople.