OK.
The Rolls-Royce company basically went bankrupt in the early 1970s and was nationalized and subsequently split into the car manufacturer part and the aircraft engine manufacturer part. At the end of the 1980s, the aircraft engine manufacturer part was reprivatised as “Rolls-Royce plc” while the car manufacturer part went to Vickers (together with a license to use the brand for cars) and from there to Volkswagen which foolishly neglected to obtain a license for the name, even though they had secured rights to use the grille and the figurine. The right to use the name went to BMW instead.
Rolls-Royce (the original company) had bought the Bentley company in 1931, and Volkswagen agreed with BMW that Bentley as well as the actual car factory would stay with Volkswagen while BMW would start building cars that looked like Rolls-Royces and be called that, too. So technically BMW doesn’t “own” Rolls-Royce, but if you buy a new Rolls-Royce today that car is basically a BMW that is even more expensive than regular BMWs.
All of this only goes to prove that the British car industry doesn’t need lobbyists to hold its own in the EU against continental auto makers since virtually all “British” cars are actually made by EU-based (if not Indian or Chinese) companies already. The British economy these days is much more service-oriented, as opposed to manufacturing-oriented, than it used to be, and it is unlikely that, for example, London will remain as important a financial centre as it is today if the UK actually leaves the EU. Here in Frankfurt, Germany, the office space surplus will probably not last too long as EU banks relocate from London to here, which is an observation that should really not be lost on Boris Johnson, either.
