NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Exactly 100 years ago today, Charles Stewart Rolls, the third son of Lord and Lady Llangattock and owner of one the earliest auto dealerships in Great Britain, met a man named Frederick Henry Royce in a hotel in Manchester, England.

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Royce, a telegram deliveryman's son, was an engineer. The two men had been brought together by some mutual associates because Royce, the successful founder of the publicly owned Royce Ltd. electrical equipment firm, had built some cars. Three of them to be exact.

The cars had 10-horsepower, two-liter two-cylinder engines and three-speed gearboxes. The first one cost £138 to build and, on its first run, had gone 15 miles with no problems.

Rolls-Royce Centenary Phantom

Rolls agreed to sell all the cars that Royce could build. They decided they would name the cars Rolls-Royce.

To mark the anniversary, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, now owned by BMW, will make 35 centenary versions of the company's Phantom sedans. The V-12 Phantom, now in its second year of production, is the first product for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars since the marque split from Bentley. (Bentley, a brand Roll-Royce purchased in 1931, is now owned and operated by Volkswagen.)

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A Rolls-Royce Phantom ordinarily costs about $324,000, including a $1,000 destination charge and $3,000 "gas guzzler" tax. (According to EPA data, the Phantom gets a combined city and highway mileage of about 17 miles to the gallon.) Another $27,500 will be added to that price for the 15 Centenary Phantoms slated to be sold in the United States.

Buyers will probably not be negotiating big discounts on that price, either.

"On our cars, they pretty much pay sticker price," said Bob Austin, a spokesman for Rolls-Royce in the United States.

Differences between the Centenary cars and standard Phantoms will be subtle. Most notable, at least to those who follow such things, will be the "RR" badges on the car. The two silver R's will be red, rather than black, on a chrome background.

For the company's first 25 years, red was the color for the Rolls-Royce badge. The color changed in 1930 for purely cosmetic reasons, according to the company's official history, not to mark the passing of Rolls, as it is often thought. Rolls had became the first Englishman to die in an airplane crash 20 years earlier at a 1910 air show.

"Spirit of Ecstacy"

As on the standard Phantom, the "RR" logos on the wheel hubs are designed so that, while the wheels spin, the logo always remains upright.

The body of the cars will be painted "dark curzon," a color best describled as a dark metallic blue-gray, said Austin. The leather interior will be of a similar color. In the dashboard, the instrumentation in the Centenary Phantom will have a special anodized finish.

The retractable "Spirit of Ecstasy" sculpture atop the car's radiator housing will be made of solid sterling silver in the Centenary cars. As on the standard Phantom, the figure can be lowered out of site when the car is parked.

Among the standard features on the Phantom are umbrellas stowed in the leading edges of the rear doors. Pressing a button in the door edge gently releases an umbrella into the hand of the driver or front-seat passanger. Ninety-eight percent of Rolls-Royce buyers in the U.S. drive the cars themselves, said Austin.

Rolls-Royce sold 169 cars in the United States last year and has a goal of 400 cars for 2004, according to Austin.

"It would be safe to say that we are travelling at a rate that will exceed our 400 objective," he said.

Rolls-Royce Phantom Bentley Arnage Maybach 57 Corporate parent BMW Volkswagen DaimlerChrysler Price $320,000 $256,990 $305,500 Destination charge $1,000 $2,995 $2,500 Warranty (yrs./miles) 3/unlimited 3/unlimited 4/50,000 Length (inches) 230 222 225 Weight (pounds) 5,557 5,853 6,017 Engine 6.8 liter V12 6.8 liter V8 twin-turbo 5.5 liter V12 twin-turbo Transmission 6-speed auto 4-speed auto 5-speed shiftable auto Horsepower/torque (hp/ft.-lbs.) 453/531 400/616 543/664 Luggage capacity (cu. ft.) 16.2 13.2 17.5 Seating 5 4 4 Data: Edmunds.com

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