Rolls Royce knows its Origin

Origin has finished the first stage of its £100 000 contract to promote the last generation of Rolls Royce cars before ownership reverts to BMW from Volkswagen in 2002.

A brochure promoting the first of the last three models to be manufactured at Rolls Royce’s Crewe factory will be published in September, and trade ‘teasers’ were sent out to Rolls Royce dealers last week as the car was launched. BMW production will move from Crewe, where the car has been manufactured since 1946, when VW’s lease on the marque expires.

The unspoken message of the campaign, according to Origin’s commercial manager Paul Hartley, is: ‘This is the last opportunity for people to own an authentic Rolls Royce.’

Hartley says the campaign is aimed at invoking nostalgia around the Rolls Royce marque and implying that it is the last opportunity to get a car with all the tradition with which it is associated.

The brief, which Origin is understood to have won in March against Furneaux Stewart, will not be completed to Origin’s design as the promotion models of the final two Crewe-manufactured cars will not be available to be photographed and used in brochures.

Photographs for the brochure were taken in evocative settings in the North of England, including the house formally belonging to Rolls Royce founder Henry Royce.

BMW is moving the head office and manufacturing to Chichester.