- 6 minutes ago
Rolls-Royce customizes hand-painted coachlines and light-filled ceilings and makes one-off coachbuilt models costing tens of millions of dollars. Nearly every car that leaves the automaker's Goodwood factory is personalized. As more ultra-wealthy buyers seek products no one else can own, Rolls-Royce is investing $400 million to expand its bespoke operations.
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00:03This artisan will spend seven and a half hours recreating the night sky on the ceiling of this Rolls-Royce.
00:10But it isn't just any night sky.
00:12She's specifically replicating the stars over southern England on January 1, 2003.
00:18It does contain 1,040 holes, which means that every single hole I have to manually drill.
00:25This feature alone starts at over $10,000, and it's one of the thousands of detailed customizations Rolls-Royce offers.
00:33An entry-level Rolls-Royce begins at around $370,000.
00:38But with so many options to personalize, the price can skyrocket from there.
00:43Some collectors don't even keep track of how much they spend.
00:46Yeah, I don't even know. We don't care.
00:50As of right now, we have three, you know, and my husband's like, no, no more.
00:54The automaker's $30 million drop tail and $28 million boat tail are reportedly the most expensive cars ever commissioned.
01:03In some cases, the work doesn't stop there.
01:06Buyers will spend more taking their Rolls-Royces to outside companies for even more customizations.
01:12When I got the Spectre from Rolls-Royce, it was $625,000.
01:17And then the upgrade with Mansouri was about $700,000.
01:23So what exactly are Rolls-Royce customers paying for? And what makes buyers come back for more?
01:30When our clients interact with us, they don't need a car. They've typically got lots of cars.
01:36They want to create a masterpiece. And that could be happening here.
01:40For VIP and select American clients, it's where creating a bespoke Rolls-Royce begins.
01:46When a client first walks in, the first thing I notice about them is their energy.
01:51It is kind of like mind reading. Some clients, when they walk in, they don't know what they want.
01:58Rebecca knows what she wants.
02:00I'm a purple girl. I love my cars purple. I also like them to stand out.
02:06She's here with her husband, Carrie, who enjoys the experience as much as the cars.
02:11Well, you're expecting an office environment. And then the first thing when I walked in, it's like, no, this is
02:16like a house.
02:16Yes, definitely.
02:17You feel comfortable.
02:19Rebecca has already commissioned two cars with the design staff here.
02:23One of our cars that we have is the Scintilla. They did one of 10.
02:28Today, Rebecca is back for her third custom car, a purple Cullinan SUV.
02:32And the detail, can I see the detail of the, yeah, see. And there you can see the shine, too.
02:40And I didn't know about the designs that you could do inside the leather, the perforations.
02:47Rolls-Royce's perforation technique involves punching thousands of precisely sized holes into leather to make complex 3D patterns.
02:56The interior really reflects the outside of the two-tone, arctic white being on the top, and then the twilight
03:04purple being the body color.
03:06I can actually imagine Rebecca wearing, like, an outfit that's this combination.
03:12Oh, yeah, definitely.
03:14Getting to know each client well enough to build a car for them is the hardest part of the job.
03:20Then comes the actual design work.
03:23Everything starts with a pen and paper for me.
03:26And I got, like, two sets of monitors.
03:30And then also I've got my laptop and then another rendering tower and a Cintiq, which is like a touch
03:36screen monitor.
03:38The Cullinan starts at over $440,000.
03:43But with all the customizations, the final price?
03:46Yeah, I don't, I don't even know.
03:48We don't care.
03:50We know.
03:51Designs like these don't come together overnight.
03:54A bespoke Cullinan can take 9 to 12 months on average.
03:58Rebecca will be back soon to start planning her fourth car, a coach-built Nightingale.
04:03Rolls-Royce is only manufacturing 100 of them.
04:06And the price is expected to start around $9.5 million.
04:11And with deliveries beginning in 2028, her Nightingale will take years.
04:16It's a feeling that you get when you see, you know, the amount of work that you've put into it,
04:21picking the colors, the inside of it.
04:24You just sort of know.
04:25You're excited about it.
04:27It can't come quick enough.
04:28But turning Rebecca's dreams into real cars takes an extraordinary amount of human labor.
04:35At the Rolls-Royce factory in Goodwood, England, that labor still happens mostly by hand.
04:39This is the only place in the world where we build these fantastic motor cars.
04:45It's very much like, I would say, like a belay.
04:52Speed is not a priority here.
04:54We've been doing it here in Goodwood since 2003.
04:58Back then, we finalized one car per day, up to 200 cars per year.
05:03Today, we have the capacity to finalize up to 28 cars per day.
05:08That factors out to between 5,500 and 6,000 cars a year.
05:12For comparison, Bentley makes up to 15,000 annually.
05:16We never measure volume.
05:18For all, it's all about the value and the value we add for the clients, the value we add to
05:24the company.
05:25Each vehicle moves through 44 distinct stations.
05:29At high-volume car factories, each stage takes as little as a minute.
05:33Here, the average is 32 minutes.
05:37Workers spend months training on each station before they're cleared to work on a car.
05:41By the time a car reaches the end of the line, more than 90 pairs of hands have touched it
05:46during roughly 600 hours of labor.
05:49Just about everything on each car can be customized, starting with the paint job.
05:53We do offer 44,000 different colors.
05:57If you are not happy with one of those, we can create a color unique for you.
06:01And it will be yours and yours only.
06:02And you will also be able to give the color a name.
06:06Color isn't the only way clients customize their paint job.
06:10There's also the famous Rolls-Royce coach lines that can start at over $1,000.
06:15Painting a coach line is one of the very last things we do when we produce a Rolls-Royce.
06:20And it is exactly three millimeters wide.
06:23It can take up to three hours per side to do the actual painting.
06:28And as you can feel, it's on top of the paint.
06:31And very often what you see is that the color of the coach line is matched to some of the
06:37color of the interior or other details as well.
06:42Inside each vehicle, there's even more opportunity for customization.
06:46One of the most iconic features of a Rolls-Royce is the star-studded ceiling.
06:51Welcome to the most romantic area in Rolls-Royce. Starlight headliners.
06:54Just one of Rolls-Royce's famous starry skies takes about seven and a half hours to complete.
07:01The one that Yolanta is working on today resembles the night sky on the date that Goodwood first opened.
07:07After mapping out the stars on a premium leather canvas, it's time to drill.
07:12It does contain 1,040 holes, which means that every single hole I have to manually drill.
07:20Once drilling is finished, Yolanta hand weaves fiber optic strands into the holes.
07:26I enjoy threading the most patient part of building a headliner.
07:32Then she trims the strands to create the stars.
07:35The brightness of the stars, they are different.
07:38So when cutting, I do use two, three cutting styles.
07:42So press very deeply, slightly or simply slide, which helps us to create more natural starlight constellation.
07:51In recent years, Rolls-Royce has introduced shooting stars as an optional feature of its starlight headliner.
07:57So we have eight shooting stars.
08:00And they shoot randomly in a car roughly like in five, two or eight seconds depending on the LED programming.
08:08Embroidery is another avenue for personalization.
08:11Seats, door panels, and armrests can all be customized with bespoke designs.
08:17We have cars with more than a million stitches in them.
08:22I would say inspiration from flowers and flora is quite popular.
08:27But it's the Goodwood Marquetry team that creates some of the most impressive masterpieces.
08:32Our clients can choose from approximately 30 different sets of wood, but we do offer up to 20,000 different
08:40combinations.
08:41Specialists like Audrey create bespoke wooden artwork for the doors, dashboard, and interior panels.
08:48She has 15 years of experience in marquetry.
08:51Her work is done using wooden veneers that are exactly 4.6 millimeters thick.
08:56What is interesting is being able to choose different types of veneers.
09:01So we have oak there, we have walnut, so we have different texture, different grain.
09:08Once a design is finalized, the veneers are laser cut into hundreds, even thousands of individual pieces.
09:15Each piece is inspected, positioned, and assembled by hand like a puzzle.
09:20Even the smallest misalignment can affect the finished image.
09:23So depending on the complexity of the pattern, it can be like done within a few hours, or then it
09:30can be days of assembling.
09:33After assembly, the panel undergoes multiple rounds of sanding, finishing, and inspection.
09:39It's then polished until the seams between individual pieces become nearly invisible.
09:44New materials other than veneers.
09:46So we can have metal, we can have moderate pearl.
09:49And so we need to figure out how to cut them because they don't have the same properties.
09:54And the team at Rolls-Royce is always experimenting with new techniques to get the perfect finish.
10:00Same process, some veneers, but we did them in a frying pan full of hot sand, which gives the 3D
10:07effect.
10:08Audrey also has a special place in her heart for this particular design.
10:12Bailey, that's a customer's dog.
10:17A really loved dog.
10:19So now he has his portrait in the Spectre.
10:23And I think Bailey, the actual Bailey, is really happy.
10:28Customization has always been part of Rolls-Royce's DNA, even if it wasn't the one doing the customizing.
10:35Originally, the company only sold the chassis and engine.
10:38Wealthy customers would then hire independent coach builders to create the unique bodies.
10:44This meant no two cars were exactly alike.
10:47Rolls-Royce launched its first car, the Silver Ghost, in 1906 for around $5,000 or nearly $180,000 today.
10:56In 1949, Rolls-Royce built its first complete car, body included.
11:01But the golden era didn't last.
11:03In 1971, Rolls-Royce went bankrupt.
11:06By the early 90s, annual sales had crashed from 3,300 cars a year to fewer than 1,400.
11:14Forbes called it a charity case.
11:16Then, in 1998, BMW stepped in.
11:20The automaker bought the name and built a factory in Goodwood, England.
11:24At its new headquarters, BMW didn't just modernize the engineering.
11:27It revived Rolls-Royce's long tradition of bespoke craftsmanship, expanding the brand's ability to build cars tailored to each customer's
11:36tastes.
11:37Today, nearly every car leaving the Goodwood factory includes some level of personalization.
11:43For its most exclusive clients, Rolls-Royce has even revived coach building.
11:48Cars like the Sweat Tail, Boat Tail, Drop Tail, and upcoming Nightingale aren't modified production models.
11:55They're custom-built from top to bottom.
11:57But even with the seemingly unlimited list of bespoke features Rolls-Royce offers, some clients want customizations the company can't
12:05provide.
12:06One of those clients is automotive influencer Alex Hershey, better known as Supercar Blondie.
12:12I never thought I would own a Rolls-Royce.
12:15With millions of followers across social media, she's one of the most well-known figures in the car world.
12:21After years of highlighting newly released Rolls-Royce cars in her videos, she finally bought a Rolls-Royce Wraith in
12:282020.
12:29Oh! Bright orange spirit of ecstasy!
12:33The first moment in a Rolls, I was like, what is this sorcery? It is magic. It is like you're
12:42floating on a cloud.
12:44Just four years later, she replaced it with the automaker's latest model.
12:48When I saw the Spectre, I just thought it was one of the most beautiful Rolls-Royces.
12:54Like many Rolls-Royce customers, Alex spent hours selecting colors, materials, and personalized details.
13:01But once she was finally behind the wheel, she decided even that wasn't enough.
13:06My original spec was black, and on the inside was a three-tone.
13:14Absolutely loved it.
13:16But then Mansuri came along, and I was like, yeah, let's go for it. Let's do something crazy.
13:25Mansuri is a German aftermarket company that transforms ultra-luxury cars with custom bodywork, interiors, and paint finishes.
13:34Mansuri is known for being a little bit loud, right? A bit aggressive with their styling and their looks.
13:40So they offered, you know, the lowering of the car, the widening of the body panels, the accents of the
13:48wing, the side skirts.
13:50Just gives it a little bit more of a mean look.
13:54The first thing Mansuri delivered on was color.
13:57Like Rebecca, Alex had a special shade of purple in mind when she went to Rolls-Royce.
14:02They said, if you get this specific color, you're going to need to wait a year.
14:06The first thing I told Mansuri is, I want this color. It's like a beautiful purple color.
14:11They actually call it Boracay Blue.
14:13And I said, can you get this color? He said, yes.
14:16I'm like, right. I'm in.
14:18I gave the car to Mansuri literally after a few months.
14:22And then I went away. I spent my summer in France.
14:25And then when I came back, it was ready.
14:29The result was a one-of-a-kind Spectre featuring that custom paint color and a Supercar Blondie logo
14:35integrated into the car's exterior and dashboard.
14:39I love the personalization.
14:40With the coach line that they could incorporate my branding into the coach line on the outside of the car.
14:48You'll notice here on the side that it is the Equista edition, one of one.
14:54So this is the only Rolls-Royce Spectre in the world that looks exactly like this.
15:01It also includes a completely redesigned hood made from a rare carbon fiber.
15:06So this is special purple carbon fiber that took three months to make.
15:13Because you've got to make sure that all of these lines perfectly line up from this side of the car
15:19all the way over here.
15:22So what was the final cost?
15:24When I got the Spectre from Rolls-Royce, it was $625,000.
15:30And then the upgrade with Mansory was about $700,000.
15:35So it actually cost more for the upgrade than the original car.
15:39I loved the Rolls-Royce before from factory, but I love it way more now.
15:46Every time I walk past that car, I just stare at it.
15:50That's the feeling you want when you buy a car.
15:53One thing that I absolutely love about driving a Rolls-Royce is all of my road rage disappears.
16:02Like, I do not care if it takes me an extra 10 or 20 minutes to get somewhere because I'm
16:07so comfortable in this car.
16:09And you just feel like driving it a little bit slower.
16:12It's just so beautifully luxurious.
16:16In a world where the ultra-wealthy can buy almost anything, Rolls-Royce sells something harder to acquire.
16:23The feeling that something was made specifically for you.
16:27It's just a different level of luxury, yeah.
16:31There's been a very clear trend in luxury where either it's an experience or you're creating something which has personal
16:38resonance.
16:39It's a trend the company is heavily betting on.
16:41Rolls-Royce is spending $400 million to double the size of the Goodwood plant so it can provide more of
16:48that luxury.
16:50We need more space, not to build more cars, but being able to actually do more bespoke commissions and to
16:56do more special projects.
16:58While buyers like Rebecca keep coming back, the brand's customer base is also expanding.
17:03For the new Spectre EV, over 40% of owners were first-time Rolls-Royce buyers.
17:09Their average age was 35.
17:11We've seen a clear shift in our clientele.
17:15In 2010, average age for a Rolls-Royce client was 56.
17:18Today it's 43.
17:20In 2010, we had roughly 1% of female drivers.
17:23Today it's more than 50% and still increasing.
17:26Ultra high net worth individuals are accruing their wealth more quickly today than ever before.
17:33They're buying a Rolls-Royce because they want something which is remarkable.
17:36May I know enough for everyone?
17:41Or for businesses to hoe- tipo?
17:53I walk your people down and try to use amazon, syf Rhoyce with a lot of Other people da
17:54And that's the purple link.
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