Roll on renaissance

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"People remember that hiatus in ‘98," says Purves, "and it is not that easy to understand, because frankly you would expect major companies to do due diligence. They said afterwards that they knew - but they didn't... They paid ₤440m ($616.4m) for that business."

Today Rolls-Royce is once again a growing business. Purves sees the business as partially immune to the economic downturn due to the nature of the product. The average Rolls-Royce costs from around $350,000 to $450,000. The biggest competition for Rolls-Royce, Purves believes, does not necessarily stem from other cars, but from boats and planes.

This huge value is what Purves hopes will protect and enable Rolls-Royce to flourish in the coming years. The Rolls CEO believes the fact that his customers are the uber rich means that they will be relatively protected from the economic fallout. This, along with the fact that a Rolls-Royce is usually
a considered purchase - often over a period of two years - makes him confident the company will not merely survive but expand:

"Our customers for the most part fall into the extremely wealthy category, for whom this kind of economic downturn is more perhaps an emotional issue than it is a truly economic issue," he says.

"I'm not suggesting, by the way, that we don't have people who are very directly affected. But in conversations I've had with customers, not one person has said to me: ‘I don't want to buy a Rolls-Royce.'

"They've said to me: ‘maybe I will buy a Rolls-Royce next year.' So I think the insulation we have is that we're dealing with customers who have substantial budgets, and therefore it is not a financial decision..."

"And actually a Rolls-Royce is quite a considered purchase. People don't, just on a whim, on the spur of the moment, buy a car. The gestation period is somewhere between one year and two years for someone who has thought about buying a car actually buying a car."

Rolls-Royce Cars currently sells four different types of car; the Phantom, the Phantom with an extended wheel base, the coupe and the drop head coupe, and has been selling cars in the Middle East since 1974.

The drop head coupe and the coupe contributed to 25 percent of Rolls-Royce's business in the Middle East last year. But - as Purves is quick to add - the coupe was not introduced until the second half of last year, and so did not have a full twelve months of sales. Convertibles, he also admits, are not particularly popular in the region, which he attributes to the weather.

"One of the largest convertible markets in the world is England," he says. "And the reason is that there is so little sun that when the sun is out you want to enjoy it. Whereas when you have sun all the time, as you do in Italy or Spain, you don't sell many convertibles there. It's a combination of the weather and the way people use cars."

Overall, Rolls-Royce's sales increased 20 percent last year to 1,200 cars. Eighteen percent of that total business came from the Middle East. Of the 200 cars sold in the region, 60 were in Abu Dhabi and 50 in Dubai, making the two emirates the top areas for growth in the company.

Whilst the drop head coupe and new coupe both contributed to sales, the most popular was the standard Phantom followed by the extended wheel base version. Purves also notes that in Dubai and Abu Dhabi the demand is almost always for customised vehicles. "This is the only market which I know of in the world where every Rolls-Royce we sold last year was what we would call bespoke - I mean specifically, individually tailored to a specification which was different from that which you actually read in the catalogue."

Next year, with the introduction of the RR4, Purves hopes that production and sales of the company will double. His faith is already being backed by an extension that is taking place at the company's factory in Goodwood, England.

The experimental prototype for the RR4, the 200EX, launched in March at the Geneva Motor Show and Purves is adamant there should be no reason why the RR4 cannot be revealed as planned later this year. It is intended to be launched at the Frankfurt Auto Show, with the first deliveries expected in January 2010.

If any nervousness does exist in the Rolls-Royce CEO, it is related only to the supply side.

"I will say it is absolutely going ahead as planned... But... along with every other car manufacturer, there is an uncertainty associated with the suppliers. Because some of the suppliers who help us with our cars are also supplying General Motors or Ford. With circumstances the way they are that always puts them in a degree of jeopardy. Touch wood, because it's not necessarily us on that road."

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