Milestone for a Legend

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Each workday morning at 9, outside a red brick building in Crewe, England, a Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit waits, washed and polished, for three people. As they are chauffeured deep into the Cheshire countryside, the passengers quiz the driver about the car, watch the passing hedgerows or simply sink blissfully into the leathery smells. After 60 circuitous miles, they return to the building and take a lingering look as the $98,000 sedan collects three more of Rolls' 3,800 employees for the pleasure trip they are entitled to under company policy. "I knew I'd ride in a Rolls one day," says Jack Goodwin, 62, a gearbox builder at the firm since 1938, "but I assumed I'd be in a wooden box."

"We're really one contented family," notes Ron Lindop, 50, a Rolls wood polisher for 35 years. Especially contented is Richard Perry, 54, the chief executive who has just overseen production of the company's 100,000th car. The royal-blue Silver Spur Centenary will go on display at the Crewe plant alongside a 1904 two-cylinder tourer and a 1907 Silver Ghost. Twenty-five duplicate Centenarys will be sold for $125,000 each. Says Perry of the historic achievement: "Eighty-one years is a long time to produce 100,000 cars, but that fact speaks volumes for itself."

Indeed, the speed of the assembly line at Crewe would give Henry Ford ulcers: one Silver Spirit is finished in three months. There is the matter of eleven full hides from Scandinavian steers "kept virtually free from pests and barbed wire," according to the company, for the hand-sewn upholstery. Or the Lombard walnut selected in Milan each year by Rolls experts to assure that each dashboard's unique pattern can be repaired from the same slice of the same tree. Or the famed flying-lady hood ornament, officially "the Spirit of Ecstasy," made by a 4,000-year-old Chinese casting method that produces a faithful replica; hand sanding then leaves each one slightly different.

Pride stays in overdrive at Rolls. Perry terms it "the fragile prize called reputation" and says of his products, "The rest of the world has been unable to make anything like them." Adds Dennis Jones, who takes a full day to make a radiator grille: "Henry Royce would be proud to have his name on this car." Royce, an engineer, met Entrepreneur Charles Rolls in 1904 at Manchester's Midland Hotel, and the first Silver Ghost was on the road three years later. Rolls died in an air crash in 1910, but Royce went on to launch the posh Phantom series in the 1920s and to acquire Bentley Motor Ltd. in 1931, two years before his death.

Along the way, Rolls-Royces have fallen into the hands of everyone from V.I. Lenin, who fitted his with caterpillar treads to brave the fierce Russian winters, to John Lennon, who chose a psychedelic yellow Phantom V. Lord Mountbatten bought a new one nearly every year. Indian maharajas ordered them gold-plated, Lawrence of Arabia covered his with armor. Field Marshal Montgomery's Rolls was the first private car to land with Allied forces on D day. Other owners have included Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand and the Michael Jackson clan, who are said to own eight among them. Queen Elizabeth has five Rolls-Royces and was disturbed when she saw the new square side mirrors on her latest, a 1978 Phantom VI. Company officials scrambled to replace them with the old round version.