Rolls Royce is part of BMW. Originally Rolls Royce was a car to be driven in. The Bentley was for when the lord of the manor wanted to drive himself. Famously James Bond drives a 1930 Blower Bentley in three of the 007 Novels, Casino Royale, Live and Let Die and Moonraker. Bond drives one of the last Blower Bentleys built, a battleship grey Convertible Coupé, with French Marchal headlamps.
Flesh and blood but I did look up which books he drove the Bentley in. Also in one of the books Fleming goes on about how only a Rolex is good enough for Bond, but in the later movies he wears an Omega.
He wore a lot of different watches on screen, mostly Rolex's in the beginning, but also Connery's personal Gruen. The first placed watches were Seikos in the Moore era.
I forgot about the Seikos. I read the original bond books when I was in highs school so it has been quite a while. But Fleming makes it a point in one of them to write that only a Rolex is good enough for bond, then in the movies they made watch partner deals and he wore whoever paid the most money.
For the Pierce Brosnan version of Bond, I doubt the Ian Fleming Bond would be happy to drive a BMW.
I understand I am being pedantic, but if you are a fan of the books, sometimes the changes the movie makes are hard to stomach and there is too much suspension of disbelief required.
A car to be driven in as opposed to a car to be driven...on?
What I meant was the Rolls Royce was for the rich person to be driven by his driver. The driver is driving and the owner of the car is in the back being driven. Occasionally the rich person wants to drive the car himself. He does not drive the Rolls Royce, the Bentley is used for that situation.
Edit, also Bentleys were used in racing so they had a different reputation than the Rolls Royce. Also fun fact, when Volkswagen bought Rolls Royce they did not realize/know/understand that Rolls Royce did not own the Rolls Royce name for cars. It was owned by the Saudis. So Volkswagen bought Rolls Royce but had no rights to the name. BMW swooped in and bought the rights to the Rolls Royce name. So technically today Rolls Royces are really BMWs that are licensed as Rolls Royces. BMW built a factory in England to build Rolls Royces. Volkswagen has the heritage factory that used to build Rolls Royces and Bentleys. But until VW bought the company you did not hear much about Bentley, VW really resurrected the Marque.
They weren't correct, you were. Rolls Royce (motors) was indeed sold to Volkswagen. However, BMW managed to buy a few trademarks from the firm beforehand, such as the logo and trademarked grille. BMW then used those to force VW to sell RR to them.
RR is now BMW (with all the BMW problems...) and Bentley is VAG, with all the VAG problems. Of course in the past they were British and had endless British problems, so there's that.
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u/andyschest 4d ago
But a subsidiary of Rolls-Royce, now, that's a different story.