They say you can't really be sure if a car has a good design until you've seen it in white.
The Rolls-Royce Droptail, a coachbuilt special limited to just four examples, gets that chance thanks to one buyer who commissioned an example finished in white.
The car, which was recently presented to its owner at an event in Singapore, was revealed on Thursday as the Droptail Arcadia. It joins two previously revealed examples, the La Rose Noire finished in a dark red, and the Amethyst, which has a funky shade of purple. All are roadsters, and the designers added a removable roof panel that gives the car a chopped look when fitted in place.
According to Rolls-Royce, the Arcadia buyer had a penchant for lightness, natural materials, and precision.
Rolls-Royce Droptail (Arcadia)
This resulted in an exterior with a metallic-white paint finished featuring flakes of glass and metal. The metal flakes, in this case aluminum, are larger than usual to provide extra shimmer when the light hits the surface. The buyer also chose a dark gray for the lower sections of the car, and a mirror-like finish for much of the bright work, including on the 22-inch wheels.
White is also used for the interior, in this case a bespoke color named after the buyer and used only for this car. It's joined by sections of tan leather, as well as generous surfaces of wood paneling. Like the other Droptails, a giant panel fits the rear curvature of the cabin. It's the largest continuous wood section fitted to a Rolls-Royce, and likely accounted for a decent portion of the 8,000 hours spent on crafting all the wood elements of the car.
Another special touch is the clock. It features a geometric guilloché pattern in raw metal with 119 facets, as well as hour markers that are a fraction of a millimeter thick and feature handpainted sections where the painter had to use a camera capable of magnifying an image by up to 100 times. The whole process took five months to complete, Rolls-Royce said.
Rolls-Royce Droptail (Arcadia)
Rolls-Royce Droptail (Arcadia)
Rolls-Royce Droptail (Arcadia)
Rolls-Royce hasn't revealed a price for the Droptail, but each of the four cars is thought to have cost more than 20 million British pounds (approximately $25 million). That's more than what the previous Sweptail and Boat Tail coachbuilt specials cost, but the Droptail is a much more ambitious project. While the earlier cars used existing platforms, the Droptail is based on a bespoke platform making use of multi-material construction, including some carbon fiber.
Rolls-Royce said it also took time to study the buyers' lifestyles, including the clothes the buyers wear and the food they eat to provide inspiration for the designs. To ensure the Arcadia would look just right in the many locations around the globe the buyer planned to take it, Rolls-Royce created a virtual version the buyer could “view” in various destinations using a virtual reality headset.
Like the other Droptails, the Arcadia spans 208 inches in length and almost 79 inches in width, making its footprint slightly smaller than that of the new Spectre electric coupe whose design elements it borrows, especially at the rear. One thing that isn't borrowed is the Spectre's electric powertrain. Under the long hood of the Droptail is Rolls-Royce's venerable twin-turbocharged 6.6-liter V-12. The engine delivers a peak 593 hp, which is 30 hp more than what it makes in Rolls-Royce's regular fleet.
