Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is British by birth and German by ownership.

122 years, three owners since 1980

The year is coloured by whoever held it at the time.

1. 1904 Charles Rolls and Henry Royce were introduced at the Midland Hotel in Manchester on 4 May 1904 and agreed that Rolls would sell every car Royce could build under the joint name Rolls-Royce, two years before the company Rolls-Royce Limited was formed on 15 March 1906.
2. 1980 Vickers bought Rolls-Royce Motors, the car business floated as an independent public company in 1973 after the 1971 collapse of Rolls-Royce Limited, for about 35 million pounds; the merger was announced in June 1980 and became unconditional on 6 August 1980. The Rolls-Royce name itself stayed with the aero-engine company and was licensed to the car maker, which is why Vickers' 1998 sale of the Crewe business to Volkswagen carried no right to it. Vickers was absorbed by Rolls-Royce plc in 1999.
3. 1998 BMW acquired the rights to the Rolls-Royce marque and the RR badge on 28 July 1998 from the aero-engine company Rolls-Royce plc, which had kept the trade marks when the car business was separated from it in the 1970s and licensed them back, so Vickers' sale of the Crewe factory and Bentley to Volkswagen earlier the same month carried no right to the Rolls-Royce name.
4. 2003 Volkswagen went on building Rolls-Royce cars at Crewe under a licence that ran to 31 December 2002, and BMW's new company Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Limited took the marque over at Goodwood, handing the first Phantom to its owner a minute after midnight on 1 January 2003.