Earlier this month, Rolls-Royce announced that it had secured permission to extend its factory in Goodwood, West Sussex. Working with Grimshaw Architects, the firm behind the original award-winning complex, the luxury carmaker is looking to spend around £300m on expanding the scale of the factory and increasing the amount of time it puts into building its high-value Bespoke and Coachbuild Projects.
One such car could be a future iteration of this, a one-off Phantom Extended created to celebrate 2024’s Year of the Dragon (and revealed only now, at the conclusion of the lunar year, which is followed from 28 January 2025 by the Year of the Wood Snake). Overseen by Rolls-Royce’s Private Office Shanghai, under a design team helmed by Shuai Feng, the office’s Lead Bespoke Designer, the car was commissioned by a ‘discerning client from China’ who wanted a genuine expression of Chinese culture and craft inside their car.
Working closely with the client, the Shanghai Private Office (opened in 2023) ensured that the physical representations of the dragon featured in the Phantom Extended’s capacious interior are well informed.
As the company says, ‘this melding of Chinese culture with international aesthetics is a major driver of the country’s luxury sector, particularly among younger consumers who are increasingly drawn to the Rolls-Royce brand’.
It took three months to assemble the full-width Gallery feature, with 297 individual pieces of four different woods. Smoked Eucalyptus, Sycamore veneer, Ash burr and Black Bolivar veneer ‘shadows’ create a sense of animation and depth to this representation of an ancient legend that has found countless expressions in crafts and applied arts over three millennia.
According to Martina Starke, Head of Bespoke Design, the commission’s Bespoke Gallery has a ‘floating effect that makes the dragon appear as if it is formed from clouds of smoke – a design achieved through the intricate art of marquetry, one of the most demanding techniques applied in a motor car interior.’
In addition to the meticulously hand-laid marquetry, the Phantom Dragon also features a new interpretation of the marque’s signature Starlight Headliner. Here, instead of the usual array of fibre optics stars, you can see another stylised rendition of the two dragons and the pearl, consisting of painstakingly hand-fitted fibre-optic lights, 768 red and 576 white with 24 shooting ‘stars’.
Elsewhere in the interior you’ll find black and red leather, open pore Smoked Eucalyptus door trim and the client’s family name embroidered into the headrests rendered in ancient Chinese calligraphy. The bodywork is painted in Iced Diamond Black.
It’s a century since the first Rolls-Royce Phantom was built. Over eight generations, the Phantom has maintained its status as a peerless luxury object, commanding and stately. Practically every Phantom ever built has been customised to some degree, but in Rolls-Royce’s modern era that scope and breadth of Bespoke and Coachbuild projects has increased still further.
From James Bond-inspired one-offs to the trio of £10m-plus Rolls-Royce Boat Tail models and the quartet of La Rose Noire speedsters, the company has found a deep well of moneyed clients willing to go to extraordinary lengths to set themselves apart.
This highly involved process will occupy some of the new space planned for the Goodwood site. Phantom Extended, the long wheelbase version of the flagship, tends to get the most love from customers who want a little bit extra, with the company’s first EV, the Rolls-Royce Spectre, in second place. The region most prone to uplifting the specification? The Middle East. Bespoke commissions are handled through the company’s Private Offices, with locations in New York, Seoul, Dubai and Shanghai.
There’s also the small matter of upgrading and readying the factory to accommodate the eventual transition into a pure electric brand, with a new electric model set to be unveiled later in 2025.
