Henry Royce

Royce was an electrical engineer in Manchester who built his first car in 1904 because he was unhappy with a secondhand Decauville. Charles Rolls brought the sales and the name recognition; Royce kept designing, and he continued to direct engineering from his homes in Sussex and the south of France even when illness kept him away from the works. The Silver Ghost and later the aero engines that became the Merlin came out of that obsessive attention to detail.