27 years ago today, on March 30, 1998 (March 3, 1998 lunar calendar), Volkswagen and BMW competed for Rolls-Royce. Rolls-Royce, which was about to change hands, On March 30, 1998, the American Vickers Group announced that the German BMW Automobile Manufacturing Company would buy the Rolls-Royce Automobile Manufacturing Company under the group for 1 billion marks (about 571 million dollars). Since the group announced last October that it would sell Rolls-Royce, Germany's BMW and Volkswagen competed to buy it, but Rolls-Royce eventually took a fancy to BMW. On April 20, Volkswagen, which has a soft spot for the old British Rolls-Royce, announced that it would continue to compete with BMW for the right to acquire Rolls-Royce. Since the final decision will be made by the Vickers Group's shareholders' meeting at the end of April, Volkswagen said it will come up with a higher offer and a business development plan to maintain the Rolls-Royce brand-name products. Sure enough, two of the largest shareholders in the Vickers Group expressed dissatisfaction with the sale of Rolls-Royce to BMW. Therefore, the Vickers Group hoped that BMW would increase the offer, but was rejected, and said that the 1 billion mark was the highest offer. On July 3, the Vickers Group decided to sell Rolls-Royce to Volkswagen at the 1.44 billion mark. On July 28, less than a month after Volkswagen bought Rolls-Royce at a huge cost, it announced that it would cede it to BMW. BMW reversed its recent decision to stop supplying Rolls-Royce with engines and other accessories, and agreed to Volkswagen's production of Rolls-Royce until December 31, 2002.