[Auto Home? Car Cool Culture]? I will always encounter unanswerable questions in my career: "Hey, you are a car editor? Is there a discount for buying a car from you... ", "Hey, you are from Autohome? I especially love reading your magazine..." I believe that you have also been tortured in your own field. The same is true for some car companies, which are often misunderstood. For example, Rolls-Royce couldn't bear it recently and specially posted a message on its official website to clarify: We are a car company and do not produce aircraft engines! I’m confused. Isn’t it always marked RR on the aircraft engine? He actually refused to admit it! Some friends of this brand should know that there are two "Rolls-Royce" in the world, one is the automobile company Rolls-Royce Motors, and the other is the aerospace and defense company Rolls-Royce plc. The two were actually a family, but they separated in the 1970s. They both had the same name. In China, the car company was translated as "Rolls-Royce", while the aerospace and defense company was called "Rolls-Royce". But the English name has not changed, so foreigners are still confused and confused. The aviation industry has been hit hard by the recent epidemic, and Rolls-Royce laid off 9,000 employees. Many people who don't know the truth think that something happened to Rolls-Royce, and the factory has less than 9,000 employees! Isn't this a decision to shut down the business? Some domestic media did not know whether it was intentional or intentional, and their headlines also read "Rolls-Royce layoffs." Therefore, on June 11, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars released a message on its official website, explaining in a respectful and euphemistic tone that the company only produces cars and has more than 2,000 people at the headquarters, which is different from Rolls-Royce, which produces aero engines. Is not the same thing! Later, just to be on the safe side, the Chinese media also sent emails one by one. It is inevitable that people will misunderstand each other after they have been separated for more than 40 years. After all, the names are the same, the trademarks are just different in background, and it was indeed the same company back then. Today we will focus on their work in the aviation field. The founders of Rolls-Royce are Henry Royce and Charles Rolls. In order to avoid the entanglement between Rolls-Royce and Rolls-Royce, let’s just use English! Royce was a mechanical engineer from a poor family. He built his first car in 1904. In the same year, he met the car dealer Rolls. The two hit it off and founded Rolls-Royce in 1906. In the first few years, the company was just a pure luxury car manufacturer. The Silver Ghost, which was born in 1906, was hailed as the best car in the world at that time. The bifurcation of the technology tree appeared in 1914. The First World War broke out and Britain was in urgent need of aircraft. In response to the national call, Rolls-Royce launched the first aeroengine "Eagle" in 1915. This is a 20.3-liter displacement V12 gasoline engine, which uses a very advanced single overhead camshaft layout at the time. The maximum power of the early model is 225 horsepower (168 kilowatts) / 1800 rpm. It is not easy to reach this parameter. During the same period, the Silver Ghost's engine was only a 7.428-liter V6 with 58 horsepower. Production of the Eagle continued until 1925. By the time of World War II, RR's most famous engine was the Merlin. In fact, according to the tradition of naming after birds, it should be more appropriately translated as "Merlin". This is a 27-liter displacement V12 engine. It was a small displacement engine during World War II. The early model had a power of nearly 1,000 horsepower. In the later period, it used a two-stage supercharger and used high-grade fuel to squeeze the power to 2,000 horsepower. Merlin was equipped on the Hurricane and Spitfire fighter jets, and the Allison V-1650 produced under license from the United States became the famous P-51 Mustang. Therefore, this engine can be said to have made a major contribution to the victory in World War II. Its total production is 150,000 units, plus 200,000 units produced in the United States. What’s interesting is that the 6.75-liter displacement that Rolls-Royce engines are particularly fond of is exactly equal to one-quarter of the displacement of the Merlin engine. I don’t know if this is a pure coincidence.

In the early days of World War II, RR also developed a larger Griffon vulture engine, but development was postponed due to the urgency of the war. It first concentrated on the production of Merlin. In 1943, the company finally found time to promote the Griffon, which was a 37-liter displacement V12 engine. , the power can easily reach more than 2200 horsepower. The Spitfire using Griffon has greatly increased its power and improved its high-altitude performance, but its handling characteristics have also become much more violent, so that not all pilots can accept it. Instead, they feel that the smooth Merlin engine has more soul. The output of Griffon is far from comparable to that of Merlin, with only more than 8,000 units built. Jet engines appeared in the late World War II, and Nazi Germany equipped the world's first practical jet fighter, the Me262. Britain is actually the place where jet engines originated, and the pace of research and development has also followed closely. In 1943, RR built the Welland engine and the improved version of Derwent, which were equipped in the Allied Forces' first jet fighter "Meteor". "superior. After the development of the first few models, RR successfully developed the Nene at the end of 1944. This is a legendary engine of a generation. As the power blueprint for many early fighter jets, it was not only copied by the United States, but also sold to the Soviet Union by the British government through some mysterious circumstances. After the end of World War II, the British War Cabinet was dissolved and a new round of government elections began. Churchill thought he was sure of victory but was defeated miserably in the election, and the left-wing Labor Party was elected as the ruling party. In order to improve international relations, the Labor government agreed to sell the most advanced Nene engine at the time to the Soviets. Of course, Mao Zi was very smart. He only bought a few dozen units, and then started copycatting them himself, which made the UK scream with anger. After Nene was successfully copied, it became the driving force for MiG-15 fighter jets. During the Korean War, American pilots probably scolded the British for having shit in their heads while fighting with MiG-15s. Of course, the Labor government has done many weird things, but these are nothing. RR has well grasped the changes in the aviation field from piston engines to jet engines and developed into a world aviation engine giant. In the 1950s, the company successfully developed the Conway, the world's first turbofan engine, which was equipped on the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8. From then on, it began to aggressively enter the civil aviation market to compete with American rivals. Later, in the early 1960s, Spey, the famous Spey engine, appeared. The engine was divided into military and civilian versions and was widely used. Nearly 3,000 military versions were produced and more than 5,000 civilian versions were produced. The civilian version is installed on Trident aircraft, an aircraft we are very familiar with. In 1975, China introduced the military version of Spey Mk.202 and purchased the patent contract and production drawings. Therefore, this engine also had a great impact on the Chinese aviation industry. The domestic J-H-7 used this engine and later domestically produced models. . In the mid-to-late 1960s, RR developed the astonishing RB211. This is a three-rotor engine. The advantage is that the fan, low-pressure compressor and high-pressure compressor can each work at the optimal speed, so the efficiency is better. RB211 was successfully developed in the early 1970s, but the research and development process cost RR too much money, causing the company to fall into crisis and was eventually nationalized. In 1973, Rolls-Royce was officially divided into Rolls-Royce, which makes cars, and Rolls-Royce, which makes aircraft engines. After the separation, Rolls-Royce developed well and continued to occupy half of the civil aviation engine market. Now the latest Trent series inherits the three-rotor design of the RB211 and has become the power source of many wide-body passenger aircraft. Although the United Kingdom has already established itself in the field of military aircraft, Rolls-Royce's engine technology is not bad. They now produce the lift fans of the F-35 fighter jets. So back to the question at the beginning of the article, the aviation industry has been hit hard by the epidemic. The company that laid off 9,000 people is Rolls-Royce. It is not the same company as Rolls-Royce at all. But after talking about this period of aviation history, do you feel more like buying a Rolls-Royce... Maybe the threshold for cars should be lower! (Text/Picture?Autohome?Luo Hao)