Rolls-Royce is known for its one-off and bespoke creations. The luxury automaker has made some truly remarkable vehicles for customers throughout its 110-year history, and 2023 was no exception.
This past year, Rolls-Royce had a full portfolio worth of bespoke builds and custom projects to celebrate. They ranged from exterior and interior designs to limited special editions for those customers wanting even more. To honor each build, Rolls-Royce released a list of its 10 favorite bespoke creations from 2023.
The Cullinan Black Badge’s Blue Shadow paint is one of the best new exterior colors for 2023. But this build goes deeper than paint. Inspired by the invisible Karman Line that separates the Earth’s atmosphere from outer space, it features a custom starlight headliner with an embroidery of the moon’s surface surrounded by 1,183 twinkling fiber-optic “stars.” The leather on the seats even has custom-designed perforations meant to mimic clouds. More than 75,000 individual perforations help create the look.
Cullinan Black Badge Lucid Nights
Created exclusively for Korea, these three custom Cullinan Black Badge models have some of the most vibrant paint jobs of any Rolls-Royce model to date. These three new exterior hues – Lime Green, luscious Indy Red, and Vibrant Tucana Purple – are meant to represent the nightlife of Seoul.
This one-off Cullinan was commissioned by the customer’s family to celebrate his birthday. The exterior introduces a new Pearl Rose finish to match the mother-of-pearl accents in the cabin. The company says it’s “the most extensive uses of mother-of-pearl ever seen in a Rolls-Royce motor car,” with 1,351 separate pieces inlaid throughout the cabin, some arranged in an intricate Arabic design.
Ghost Amber Roads
Rolls-Royce built just 12 Ghost Amber Roads models inspired by the actual Amber Road – an ancient trade route used for buying and selling amber for over 3,500 years. The routes themselves are depicted in the custom Starlight headliner and illuminated on the dash. The seats have a beautiful amber-like caramel color while the exterior wears a deep amber finish.
One customer had the bright idea (pun intended) to put an entire solar eclipse in their Rolls-Royce. Or at least, a depiction of one. The Ghost Black Badge Ekleipsis has a custom Starlight headliner with 940 fiber optic “stars” creating a circular pattern that mimics a solar eclipse around the moon’s silhouette. When activated, the animation is visible for seven minutes and 31 seconds – the longest duration of a solar eclipse.
Other eclipse-inspired elements were added to the dash; the passenger-side features 1,486 laser-etched “stars” representing the timeline of a solar eclipse from start to finish. At the heart of it all is a custom timepiece with a half-carat diamond set into the bezel.
Ghost Champagne Rose
What’s a Rolls-Royce without some champagne? Influencer Elinor Rose commissioned this one-of-a-kind Ghost with a custom pink exterior aptly named after her popular social media handle, @champagnerose. The pink Ghost gets a few other custom touches as well, like “Champagne Rose” sill plates, her logo custom throughout, and even a pink Starlight headliner.
This custom Ghost is all about history. The bespoke design honors the city of Manchester and the Midland Hotel where Charles Rolls and Henry Royce founded the company more than 117 years ago.
The dashboard has 10,000 laser-etched dots that depict an aerial view of the city of Manchester – with the biggest dot marking the Midland hotel – while the seats have a custom blue, black, and white finish. But the calling card is the subtle Manchester Bee etched into the seat back, the city’s logo for more than 150 years.
This Phantom essentially has an entire watercolor painting on its dashboard. Celebrating the lovely landscape of Italy’s Cinque Terre region, Rolls-Royce designers digitally sketched a custom image of the Italian coast and airbrushed that image – by hand – onto the passenger-side dash.
The interior also features a bespoke Starlight headliner with more than 14,000 stitches used to outline the entirety of Italy, with five larger “stars” highlighting the most significant regions. The rear doors have a grape branch embroidery, each with over 9,000 stitches, and subtle grape logos dot the exterior.
Rose Blossom Phantom
Did you know there’s a flower garden at Rolls-Royce’s Goodwood headquarters? That’s what inspired this project, the Rose Blossom Phantom. Rolls-Royce designers spent more than 200 hours embroidering pink, red, yellow, and white roses throughout the vehicle by hand.
The dashboard and door panels are covered in floral print with four species of butterflies hidden between the blooms. The Starlight Headliner has custom embroidered flowers to match the dash, and roses are even etched into the wood paneling between the rear seats. It’s one of the most beautiful interiors Rolls-Royce designers have ever crafted.
Rolls-Royce calls this its “most complex bespoke commission ever.” And based on the time it took to complete, we believe it. Created alongside Dutch designer Iris van Herpen, it took Rolls-Royce designers and her team 700 hours to finalize the “Weaving Water” effect.
It starts with a single sheet of metal overlaid onto a piece of fabric, which helps create the three-dimensional look. It stretches from the passenger-side dash to the seats and the Starlight headliner and includes 162 individual glass pearls applied by hand by van Herpen’s design team.
This special model marks the end of the line for the Rolls-Royce Wraith and the V12 engine. It was limited to just 12 examples worldwide. The design drew inspiration from Captain George Eyston, who set the land speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats on September 16, 1938.
The Starlight headliner recreates the night sky as it would have been on that exact date using 2,117 fiber-optic stars. The laser-etched door panels mimic the cracked surfaces of the salt flats, and there’s a single sheet of black-coated aluminum on the passenger-side dash that shows the iconic Rolls-Royce V12.
