The Rolls-Royce V-8 is a car from Rolls-Royce, built from 1905, when a car was a rich man's adventure and every maker was a workshop. Under the bonnet: 3535 cc V-8 bore x stroke: 82.5 x. Sir Henry Royce drew it.
The background
The Rolls-Royce V-8 was a car produced by Rolls-Royce in 1905 intended to compete with the then popular electric cars used in towns. Claude Johnson, business partner of C. S. Rolls suggested there would be a market for an internal-combustion-engined car that could take on the electric car market. To do this it would have to be silent, vibrationless and smokeless. The engine would also have to be mounted under the car to give the appearance of a town brougham and so needed to be very shallow. To compete with early electric cars, the engine was a completely new design with smoothness and quietness as top priorities, with power a secondary consideration.
Production of the Rolls-Royce V-8 predated by a decade the first mass production of a V8 engine, by Cadillac, and came only three years after Leon Levavasseur built the very first V8 engine of any type, with his patented, liquid-cooled Antoinette 8V aviation engine, which also pioneered petrol direct injection for its induction system. Henry Royce designed the engine in the form of a 90-degree, side-valve, 3,535 cc (215.7 cu in), V-8. To reduce fumes the then common drip lubrication was replaced by a pressure system. The power also seems to have been limited to maximise smooth running. Two body styles were proposed, a "Landaulet par Excellence" to attack the town electric market and the "Legalimit". In reality, the Legalimit could travel at 26 miles per hour (41.8 km/h) but the engine was governed so as not to exceed the legal speed limit in Britain at the time of 20 miles per hour (32.2 km/h). The Legalimit had the engine con
The engineering
Power comes from 3535 cc V-8 bore x stroke: 82.5 x. It weighs 929 kg. It shifts through a three-speed. The wheelbase is Landaulette 90 inches (2286 mm) / Legalimit 106 inches (2692 mm). These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Where it sits
Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Ford Model T, the Bugatti Type 8, the Fiat 60 HP — show what else the money bought that year. Its Rolls-Royce stablemates include the Rolls-Royce 100EX and the Rolls-Royce 102EX.
What it costs now
There is no federal ownership record for the Rolls-Royce V-8 — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.