Whirring, not purring

摘要

The name still conjures up an image of the quintessentially British can old-fashioned; elitist; expensive; and with an engine so silky-smooth that it purrs. But Rolls-Royce cars are now made by a German carmaker, BMW, while Rolls-Royce plc makes jet engines, gas-turbine generators and powerful marine motors, and is expected to report half-year pre-tax profits of over ￡200m ($380m) later this month, an impressive 35% up on the comparable figure in 2004. The British government used to be its biggest customer, buying its jet engines for Royal Air Force planes and its nuclear power plants for Royal Navy submarines. But nowadays the Pentagon is its biggest defence customer. Four-fifths of Rolls-Royce's sales are abroad, where it competes—with growing success—against, among others, jet engines made by General Electric (GE), a firm with sales of $150 billion, over ten times its size.