Ferdinand Piech, former CEO of Volkswagen AG<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nThe wrinkle came four years later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1997, Vickers announces it is selling Rolls-Royce Motors, followed shortly thereafter by the announcement that Volkswagen AG had acquired Rolls-Royce Motors from Vickers for $780 million. But while Vickers owned the rights to the factory, its contents, its workers and its materials, it didn\u2019t own the rights to the Rolls-Royce name. That belonged to Rolls-Royce PLC, which preferred BMW.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a humiliation of gigantic proportions for Ferdinand Piech, the imperious chief executive of VW, Rolls-Royce PLC sells the Rolls-Royce name and trademarks to BMW for a mere $65 million. An agreement is reached where Volkswagen retains the Rolls-Royce name through the end of 2002. Thereafter, BMW will produce a new Rolls-Royce in a new factory, while Volkswagen will maintain the right to build Bentleys in the Crewe factory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This week in 2002, the last Roll-Royce rolls off the line Crewe, the silent spectator to an end of one era and the beginning of another. Costing \u00a3250,000 at the time, the last Corniche was resold by Bonham’s at its Goodwood Revival auction in 2018 for \u00a3189,750.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Given that German automakers now own both Rolls-Royce and Bentley, who really won the Battle of Britain?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Call it the Battle of Britain. This week in 2002 marked the end of a tussle for Rolls-Royce as two German automakers competed for the prize. TheDetroitBureau.com looks back at this tale of corporate maneuvering. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13752,"featured_media":231245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,5,1164,905],"tags":[7661,7658,7659,7657,7656,7660],"make":[36,102,113],"post-state":[],"category_old":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231229"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13752"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231229"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231270,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231229\/revisions\/231270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231229"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=231229"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=231229"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=231229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}