- New Rolls-Royce Phantom Centenary Private Collection
- Built to celebrate 100 years of the Phantom
- Liberal use of gold and 'most intricate Rolls-Royce woodwork ever'
- Estimated to cost £2.5m
- Just 25 examples being built
- It's impressive - but not the swankiest Rolls-Royce ever...
Rolls-Royce has unveiled the Phantom Centenary Private Collection - the company’s ‘most complex and technologically ambitious’ project to date.
The car has been created to celebrate the Phantom’s 100th birthday and just 25 examples will be built - each costing a whopping £2.5m.
The Phantom Centenary is a hand-built work of art, representing over 40,000 hours of development by the marque’s Bespoke Collective division.
The rear seats alone feature 160,000 embroidery stitches on couture-quality fabric, while the front seats are laser-etched with sketches inspired by Phantom’s early design drawings.
If you look really closely, the front seats feature a rabbit sitting in tall grass - which is a nod to ‘Roger Rabbit’, the codename for the relaunch of Rolls-Royce in 2003.
Elsewhere you’ll find a seagull design, the codename for the 1923 Phantom I prototype.
Rolls-Royce has also introduced three world-firsts in automotive woodcraft: 3D marquetry, 3D ink layering, and 24-carat gold leafing, each used to illustrate Phantom’s storied history in exquisite detail.
Speaking of gold, the Phantom Centenary’s ‘Spirit of Ecstasy’ - the famous figurine that sits on the bonnet - is solid gold and based on the original 1925 casting.
Chris Brownridge, Chief Executive at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, tells us: “For a century, the Phantom nameplate has expressed the pinnacle of Rolls-Royce’s abilities. To honour that legacy, this extraordinarily ambitious Private Collection introduces new techniques and is the result of over 40,000 hours of work, culminating in a motor car which reaffirms Phantom’s status as a symbol of ambition, artistic possibility, and historical gravitas.”
As with the regular Phantom (which costs from around £450,000 to buy new) this Centenary model is powered by a 6.75-litre V12 engine that develops 571 hp.
Here, though, the engine cover is finished in Arctic White and has also been detailed with 24-carat gold.
It’s swanky, but it’s not the most sought-after Rolls-Royce of recent times...
The Rolls-Royce Phantom Centenary Private Collection is opulent by any measure - but it’s not the swankiest Roller of all time.
That honour appears to go to the Rolls‑Royce Droptail La Rose Noire (below), a coach-built stunner valued at around £25m when it was unveiled in 2023.
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Just four examples of the La Rose Noire were created as part of an ‘invitation only’ selection process among some very well-heeled clients.
It was inspired by a type of rose called the Black Baccara and featured the ‘most complex expression of parquetry (editor’s note - it’s a type of woodwork) in Rolls-Royce history’.
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A spokesperson added: “The artwork represents an abstract expression of falling rose petals, formed using 1,603 pieces of black wood veneer triangles. The highly complex pattern is formed with 1,070 perfectly symmetrical elements forming the background, and 533 asymmetrically positioned red pieces representing the rose petals. The asymmetry was requested by the clients to represent a natural, organic ‘scattering’ of petals.”
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