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Britain orders 10,000 ventilators from F1/McLaren/Mercedes/Ford/Rolls-Royce/Airbus

Paramedics and ambulance personnel get instructions from a command unit outside London's ExCel Centre arena, which is being turned into a 4,000 bed temporary hospital called NHS Nightingale to deal with coronavirus patients. The hospital is due to open Monday, March 30. / AP     LONDON — Britain has ordered 10,000 ventilators from a consortium of leading aerospace, engineering and Formula One racing companies which will start production this week in response to an urgent government call for industry to help save lives. The 27-strong team, including Airbus, BAE Systems, Ford and Rolls-Royce, have joined forces to ramp up production of a ventilator made by Smiths Group, which supports those with complications from COVID-19. The consortium, which also includes seven Formula One teams including McLaren and Mercedes, home to World Champion Lewis Hamilton, said they had pulled staff off existing projects to meet the national need. Some 1,228 people have died from coronavirus in the United Kingdom and a senior health official said on Saturday the country would be doing well if it manages to keep the death toll below 20,000. "This consortium brings together some of the most innovative companies in the world," Dick Elsy, the head of the consortium, said in a statement. "I am confident this consortium has the skills and tools to make a difference and save lives." The United Kingdom, which initially only had 5,000 ventilators available in its National Health Service, has been trying to secure additional supplies after realising it needed 30,000 to cope with the peak of the outbreak. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is now in isolation in Downing Street after testing positive for coronavirus, made an emergency appeal earlier this month for manufacturers to retool their production lines and start making specialist health equipment including ventilators. Britain now has about 8,000 ventilators, with another 8,000 on order from international manufacturers that are due in coming weeks. Last week it placed an order for a newly-designed model from the vacuum cleaner company Dyson that will need to be approved by the health regulator. Mercedes part of a separate effort, too Separately on Monday a second consortium including Mercedes Formula One and other F1 teams said it had developed in less than a week a new version of a breathing aid that can help coronavirus patients.

Rolls-Royce drops top for a new Dawn

Last summer Rolls-Royce confirmed it's been developing a new convertible, and now it has given that droptop a name: Dawn. Though Goodwood has not exactly been forthcoming with the details, the new Dawn is widely expected to serve as the convertible version of the Wraith fastback coupe. Its arrival would complete the expansion of the "entry level" Rolls-Royce family (if a relative term has ever been more so) alongside the Ghost, Ghost Extended Wheelbase, and the aforementioned Wraith to mirror that of the Phantom range above it. Now if you're thinking that the name Dawn doesn't convey the same supernatural "spirit" as the other nameplates in Goodwood's lineup, you're right. The press release below speaks of opportunity and the promise of a new day, and of course the name conveys as well the letting in of the sunshine (in this case) through its opening roof. But the handle also borrows from the company's considerable history. The original Silver Dawn was a highly exclusive cabriolet, of which Rolls only built 28 examples between 1950 and '54. It was the first Rolls-Royce to feature bodywork built in-house, and the company promises the new Dawn will offer extensive customization options as well. The Dawn has already been shown to dealers at a conference in LA, but we'll have to wait until early in the new year to see it for ourselves. Related Video: ROLLS-ROYCE MOTOR CARS ANNOUNCES A NEW DAWN FOR SUPER-LUXURY MOTORING 12 May 2015, Los Angeles, California Rolls-Royce Motor Cars today announced the name of its forthcoming new car. The new model, an exciting and sensuous drophead, will be known as Rolls-Royce Dawn. The car was unveiled to representatives of the marque's 130-strong global dealer network at the 2015 Rolls-Royce World Dealer Conference in Los Angeles, California today. "Our new Rolls-Royce Dawn promises a striking, seductive encounter like no other Rolls-Royce to date," said Torsten Mueller-Oetvoes, Chief Executive Officer. "Dawn is a beautiful new open-top motor car with a name that suggests the fresh opportunities that every new day holds – an awakening, an opening up of one's senses and a burst of sunshine. It will be the most social of super-luxury motor cars for those beautiful people who wish to bathe in the sunlight of the world's social hotspots." Rolls-Royce Dawn is the next step in the renaissance of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars which began in 2003 with the launch of Phantom and subsequent introductions of Ghost and Wraith.

2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom First Drive | When only the best will do

Lucerne, Switzerland – Every car, regardless of where it is designed, built, or sold, can be described as a series of compromises. From economy hatchbacks to midsize sedans, fullsize pickup trucks to hybrid supercars, meeting a very specific set of criteria means intentionally missing all the rest. And so it is with the Rolls-Royce Phantom. Except that the only compromise worth talking about is that the buyer must possess a price-is-no-object desire for perfection. Before handing over the keys to a brand-new, eighth-generation Phantom, and shortly after rattling off nearly every positive-tinged adjective in the English language, Rolls-Royce communication director Richard Carter tells us that this car represents "the best that humankind can do in terms of luxury automobiles." A heady claim, but as it turns out, one that is difficult to dispute. Perhaps the biggest single element that advances this new Phantom past the model it replaces is Rolls-Royce's new Architecture of Luxury, a ground-up spaceframe platform that doesn't share its bones with any other product currently under the BMW umbrella. Not only is it 30 percent stiffer than the seventh-gen Phantom, the new architecture is flexible enough that it will form the basis for all future Rolls-Royce products. "Project Cullinan and eventually the next Ghost, Wraith, Dawn will ride on this architecture, as well as future coachbuild projects," said Philip Koehn, Director of Engineering for Rolls-Royce. Rolls-Royce goes to great pains to make the Phantom as malleable to the whims of its customers as possible. Besides the obvious paint and interior color choices – of which there are a great many – there's now a so-called Gallery option that makes up a large portion of the dashboard. It's a glass-enclosed space designed to house just about anything a Phantom customer could possibly want to put on display. We saw some beautiful ceramic work, jewel-like shell designs, and even a swath of iridescent feathers. Directly in front of the driver is a digital gauge cluster designed to mimic the look of traditional dials. It's resolution is high enough that individual pixels can't be made out from the driver's seat. We think some classically styled gauges would be more in keeping with the Phantom's mission statement, but that's our only gripe inside, and it's minor.