Rolls-Royce Limited was created over a famous lunch brokered by Henry Edmunds at the Midland Hotel in Manchester on 4 May 1904. Edmunds brought together Henry Royce, a successful engineer and Charles Rolls, the owner of the first car dealerships.
The meeting led to an agreement that Rolls would exclusively sell as many cars as Royce could produce. The marque launched in 1904 following a verbal agreement made back in May although a formal agreement was not signed between the two until December. C.S. Rolls & Co were the sole agents for a series of two, three, four and six cylinder cars that broke the mould for engineering and craftsmanship. By 1907 Royce had created the first Silver Ghost, a car of legendary smoothness that completed a 14,371-mile virtually non-stop run that led a journalist to call it 'the best car in the world'.
