By the time the company produced their first car, "A Renault influenced, De Dion powered Voiturette in 1900," it wasn't long before the company was up and running making their own engines that were single or two cylinder. However, by 1910, that was increased to four cylinders. At that point, some of the engines were enormous; they went as large as seven point four liters. Six and the straight eight cylinder engines were added shortly afterwards. However, the 1910 Alder Tourer was best known as the "Rolls-Royce 40/50 HP Silver Ghost". In those days, automobiles were still considered unreliable and were looked on as noisy, smelly, and dirty. Many people still preferred the horse and buggy. Only the rich had cars at that time.
The company continued to work on this car and had entered it in the Scottish Reliability Races in 1907. The reason it was called the "Silver Ghost" was the Managing Director Claude Johnson decided to fit a silver colored 40/50 horse powered chassis that had silver plated details with a matching tourer body. The engine is located in the front with a manual transmission. It has a wheelbase of 102.5 inches with four doors. The Scottish Reliability Race was a race that took forty days and the distance was fourteen thousand miles nonstop. And that was before it was in need of service. This was unheard of at the time so it caused quite a stir worldwide. This also caused the British magazine Autocar, considered the best-known magazine, to write in an article that the Silver Ghost was "the best car in the world". This is still the motto of Rolls-Royce. There were 8,416 of this car made. The one that was in the race was the only true "Silver Ghost"; all of the cars of the 40/50 chassis were referred as "Silver Ghosts".
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