Rolls Royce USA

I received an email with the image above of an elderly gentleman standing beside a Rolls Royce roadster.  Apparently M. Allen Swift had received the Rolls as a graduation present from his father in 1928.  He died in 2005 at the age of 102.   He still had the car and had managed to put 170,000 miles on it in that time.

I was totally unaware that Rolls Royce had ever had a production facility in the United States until I did a bit of Googling on Mr. Swift.  It would appear that Rolls Royce produced cars for the US market from 1921 through 1931 in Springfield, Connecticut.

Mr. Swift bequeathed his Rolls and one million dollars to the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum in Springfield, Connecticut.  The museum opened in 2009 and the car is displayed there.

A story in the Hartford Courant from April, 2009 has additional information.