PAST IMPERFECT:CLAUDE GOODMAN Johnson, the man who became known as "the hyphen in Rolls-Royce", was born in 1864 at Datchet, Buckinghamshire, the son of a middle-class official in the Science Museum.
He attended St Paul's School where he became a foundation scholar specialising in drawing. From there he went to the Royal College of Art but soon realised that he lacked sufficient artistic ability, and went to work instead in the Science Museum.
There he showed flair for organising exhibitions and publicity. He developed an interest in motor cars and aircraft, becoming the first secretary of the Automobile club and then the Aero Club. In 1891 he eloped with the daughter of an army surgeon, Fanny Morrison, and although the pair had eight children, only one child, a daughter, was to survive.
In 1903, Johnson worked briefly for Paris Singer when he launched his ambitious City and Suburban Electric Car Project, but he soon left to join Charles Rolls in his London car sales business.
He had his first meeting with Henry Royce in Manchester in May 1904, and Rolls rushed to Johnson's flat in London to wake him up to come and see the car made by "the greatest engineer in the world".
Johnson went to work for the new Rolls-Royce company, organising all sorts of publicity but perhaps more importantly, it was he who persuaded Rolls's father, Lord Llangattock, to supply the capital which allowed the merger of the Rolls and Royce companies, forming Rolls-Royce, of which Johnson became managing director for the then princely sum of £750 per annum and 4 per cent of profits.
With Charles Rolls becoming less interested in cars and more interested in aircraft until his death in 1910, and Royce retiring to the south of France because of ill-health, Johnson became the key figure in the development of the Rolls-Royce company. It was he who persuaded Royce to build the Silver Ghost and to concentrate on a single model, while at the same time expanding the company and moving all production to Derby.
Johnson was widely known and respected and had few failures. However, he was convinced after the first World War that there was potentially a huge market for Rolls-Royce in the US. He established a Rolls-Royce factory there but the world was changed after the war, and the American factory did not last long before it closed - Rolls-Royce's biggest commercial failure.
Between 1907 and 1920, under Johnson's guidance, the net worth of Rolls-Royce rose from slightly over £100,000 to £1.2 million and net profits rose from £5,390 to £202,833. When he died in 1926, after catching pneumonia at the funeral of a friend, turnover had reached some £5.5 million.
Perhaps the greatest tribute to this kindly man - and the one he would have appreciated most - was paid to Johnson by his friend Alfred Harmsworth, the newspaper proprietor, who said that the Rolls-Royce business was "a delicate orchid which owes its success entirely to Johnson".