The Making Of
Bespoke IS Rolls-Royce
CENTRAL OFFERING SINCE 2003
Central to the marque's offering and experience since production began at Goodwood in 2003.
It is the unique vision and capabilities of the Bespoke Collective that make Rolls-Royce a true luxury house, not merely an automotive manufacturer.
Patrons have always been able to personalise their motor car's appearance in myriad different ways – beginning with a choice of 44,000 paint colours.
By insisting on fixed dimensions we are able to ensure the bodywork maintains the essential proportions that visually identifies as a 'true' Rolls-Royce.
Examine any contemporary Rolls-Royce, and it exhibits the 2:1 ratio of body height to wheel diameter first established with the Silver Ghost in 1907. The body shape is defined by three fluid lines running the length of the car: the ‘waft line’ that gives the car its sense of movement; the ‘waist line’ that lends it purpose and presence; and the silhouette, which expresses its individual character.
Patrons and designers enjoy considerable creative freedom in a coachbuilding project, within these fundamental design parameters, bearing the Spirit of Ecstasy figurine above the grille.
The current Phantom was the first car to be built on the marque's proprietary structure. This is an all-aluminium spaceframe chassis, designed and engineered to be scalable for a range of different Rolls-Royce models.
Rolls-Royce and its patrons can now look beyond Bespoke and build the car itself, to commission, perfectly aligned with a lifestyle in which suits the client's investments in luxury, from property, clothing and jewellery to works of art, yachts or private aircraft are personal, individual and unique.
As a House of Luxury, Rolls-Royce imbues its products with meaning. A Rolls-Royce serves as a canvas onto which clients reflect their personal tastes, express ambitions and often, define legacies.
To fulfil these extraordinary client commissions Rolls-Royce is initiating a distinct department within the company, Rolls-Royce Coachbuild.
The discipline inherent in Rolls-Royce’s approach to coachbuilding requires elite artistic skills that do not exist elsewhere in the automotive industry. Commissioning clients demand an object that is truly transformative; an object that makes a permanent statement and sets itself apart from anything that has gone before.
The brand and its clients have become progressively closer and the designers, engineers and craftspeople at the Home of Rolls-Royce, a Global Centre of Luxury Manufacturing Excellence, have developed a unique fluency in interpreting the lifestyles of it's Patrons.
This evolution of mutual confidence has resulted in ever more ambitious commissions, reaching well beyond the scope of Bespoke competencies and capacity, into the rarefied realm of coachbuilding.
The marque’s body-in-white, with its scalable aluminium spaceframe architecture, was completely reconfigured to support Boat Tail’s generous proportions, a process that took eight months in itself. As ever, the 15-speaker Bespoke Rolls-Royce Audio System was intended from the motor car’s inception, but the spaceframe architecture was exploited differently.
As Boat Tail is a fully homologated, road-legal motor car that was created to be driven, it was only fully released by the marque once it had undergone the same rigorous dynamic testing as all other Rolls-Royces, including high speed analysis to ensure the contents of the rear hosting suite are sufficiently fastened and therefore silent under power.