It's a Rolls-Royce that's about as Manc as rock'n'roll hellraiser Liam Gallagher. Now there's a sentence you weren't expecting.
And what better machine to travel in to follow the history of possibly the world's most famous car maker: a Rolls-Royce 20/25 Landaulette, coachbuilt in Chorlton-cum-Medlock by William Arnold (Manchester) Limited in 1934.
The car, owned by Mark Watkins, chairman of the northern section of the Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts Club, is a mere 90 years old, but we're in it to trace the steps of the founding process of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars 120 years ago, in 1904.
In May that year Charles Rolls and Henry Royce met at Manchester’s Midland Hotel with the shared intention to make the future of motoring something "extraordinary", according to modern-day Rolls-Royce.
Or did they? Let's revisit that in a little while....
The original Rolls-Royce factory was in Cooke Street, Manchester. Cars were produced there for around five years before the company eventually landed at its base at Crewe, before its acquisition by BMW and a move to Sussex in 2003.
We're accompanied on the roadtrip by Andy Spinoza, author of Manchester Unspun, about that late-80s/early-90s era, which, among others, spawned the likes of the Gallagher brothers' band Oasis.
And we go right past some of the landmarks featured in Unspun as we travel in the '34 Rolls-Royce from Henry Royce's home, Brae Cottage in Knutsford, to the parking bay outside the Midland.
Mark, 63, a consultant engineer, spent five years restoring his Rolls-Royce. But far from being mollycoddled, it's in regular use. ‘I even go to the supermarket in it,’ he says.
So any concerns about getting from Brae Cottage to the Midland Hotel lasted no longer than the first 100 yards along the A34, with the car easily keeping pace with traffic, and showing no signs of distress in jams. His longest trip was to a Rolls-Royce event at Burghley House, in Lincolnshire, and then an award for the best privately-restored car was an unexpected bonus.
‘The car was originally sold to someone called R C Irwin, in Manchester, and he was the first secretary of the London North Western Railway Company. He owned the car, as far as we can tell, until around the war,’ adds Mark.
‘After the war, it disappears until 1963, where it comes up again in the Manchester Evening News archives, for sale on a garage forecourt for £164. Apparently, it was bought by the guy I bought it from. He had it till 1971, when he took it to pieces.’
Mark acquired it, and completely restored it, including refurbishing and recreating the bodywork originally coach-built by Arnold's.
‘As an engineer, once you start working on one of these, you realise just how different the quality of the engineering work is. The internal construction in the engine is just leagues ahead of anything else of its time,’ Mark says.
The road trip started at Brae Cottage, to which the owners, who prefer to remain anonymous, kindly allowed access. Much of Royce's favourite and significant aspects and elements remain, including a greenhouse, which can boast Rolls-Royce engineering in its construction. Henry Royce engineered a mechanism to allow the single movement of one lever to open all the windows, and engineer Mark got very excited when he saw the innards of the now defunct greenhouse boiler which were also advanced for their time.
He was also excited about simply being in the grounds of Brae Cottage. ‘The membership is going to be very jealous of me, especially getting the opportunity to park my Rolls-Royce in the gate next to the Brae Cottage sign. It's our Holy Grail photo,’ he whispers.
Rick Dallimore, who recently retired from estate agents Meller Braggins, oversaw the sale of Brae Cottage to its current owners. ‘Royce was an electrical engineer, and Brae Cottage was the first house in the area to have electricity. I obviously saw a great deal of it when it went up for sale, and many of the original features remain.’
Rick, by coincidence, also has a vintage Rolls-Royce which was once owned by George Formby.
Our journey pauses at the site of the William Arnold (Manchester) Limited coachworks on Upper Brook Street, Manchester, where is little to see in terms of heritage – it has long since become modern housing, as has our next stop, the Hacienda, now apartments, but once the meeting place for another significant group of change-makers.
Andy Spinoza says: ‘The broadcaster, music manager and producer Tony Wilson said Manchester's history was manufacturing, but the production line of the future was going to be music, art, fashion, design, images, the society of the spectacle, and the Hacienda and Factory Records were part of that.
‘And, actually, the City Council basically exploited that. What he said to the City Council led it to back the Hacienda when it was in trouble with the police. Any other city in the world would have closed Hacienda down, but the council lobbied the police and the magistrates and said 'we've got to keep this place open'.
‘It's known worldwide and it played a part in the new economy: music, arts, tourism all adding up to the profile of the city going global.’
From the Hacienda, our roadtrip took us to The Midland which may or may not have been the scene of that historic meeting between Charles Rolls and Henry Royce.
‘They certainly met and they certainly were in Manchester,’ Mark says. ‘But whether the actual meeting was formal and whether it was at the Midland Hotel, opinions differ.
‘By the stage that they met, Henry Royce would have had his factory well established in Manchester. Royce was essentially an electrical engineer and he was making electrical machinery, generators, dynamos, electrically operated cranes and things for many years before he met Charles Rolls.
‘They could well have met at any of his premises in Manchester, and then gone for a drink at the Midland Hotel afterwards or whatever, who knows? But the story that they formally met at a meeting at the Midland, I don't know...’
Some Manchester historians have tried to track their likely steps. It’s all conjecture, but the Midland certainly played its part.
The hotel has undoubtedly a major role in the city’s story. For Andy, it was a hub for news generation and interviews.
‘People would come from around the world and there were only two or three good hotels in Manchester at that time. The Midland was the hotel for top people, so Granada TV would put their stars in there.
‘As a gossip columnist, I'd walk into the Midland and see actors, politicians, city leaders scattered around the reception area, or, you know, having sotto voce conversations about whatever projects they were working on.’
Just as two visionary men may have been doing there 120 years ago.
