The Rolls-Royce V-8 was a car produced by Rolls-Royce in 1905 intended to compete with the then popular electric cars used in towns.[3]
Claude Johnson, business partner of C. S. Rolls suggested there would be a market for an internal-combustion-engined car that could take on the electric car market. To do this it would have to be silent, vibrationless and smokeless. The engine would also have to be mounted under the car to give the appearance of a town brougham and so needed to be very shallow.
To compete with early electric cars, the engine was a completely new design with smoothness and quietness as top priorities, with power a secondary consideration. Production of the Rolls-Royce V-8 predated by a decade the first mass production of a V8 engine, by Cadillac, and came only three years after Leon Levavasseur built the very first V8 engine of any type, with his patented, liquid-cooled Antoinette 8V aviation engine, which also pioneered petrol direct injection for its induction system.
Henry Royce designed the engine in the form of a 90-degree, side-valve, 3535 cc, V-8.[2]