One of the biggest appeals of a Rolls-Royce is that it can be individualized extensively, so that there is lesser risk of your million-dirham vehicle not standing out at the golf club parking lot. From using trees from your estate for the car’s wood paneling, to embedding heirloom artefacts into the dashboard trim, the options to personalize your vehicle is literally boundless. Here’s one such, a Phantom specially commissioned by a Stockholm-based entrepreneur with a passion for flowers.
The customer, Ayad Al Saffar, a businessman who came to Sweden from Lebanon as a refugee in 1984, challenged the designers, craftspeople and engineers at Rolls-Royce Bespoke Collective to envision “a car that immerses its occupants in a beguiling floral scene.” The result is the special ‘Rose Phantom’ with a million embroidered stitches!
“The Rose Phantom is a stunning iteration of a contemporary Rolls-Royce. Our extraordinary craftspeople at the Home of Rolls-Royce have achieved, with this car, something which can only be described as sublime,” said Torsten Müller Ötvös, Chief Executive, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. “The work of our Bespoke Collective is the best in the world. When I look at creations like this car, it is with a sense of pride that I know that these skills could not be replicated anywhere else in the world. This is undoubtedly one of the greatest Rolls-Royce Phantoms of its generation,” he added.
The Rose Garden at the Home of Rolls-Royce in Goodwood, West Sussex, served as the primary point of inspiration for Ieuan Hatherall, a Bespoke Designer for Rolls-Royce. This Rose Garden is the only place in the world you’ll find the Phantom Rose, a variety bred exclusively for Rolls-Royce by British Rose Breeder Philip Harkness of Harkness Roses.
“There is a transcendent beauty when a rose garden is in full bloom. The patron wanted to create that same feeling of awe; an abundance of flowers to lift the spirit and celebrate nature’s decadent beauty, in the Rose Phantom’s serene interior,” Ieuan Hatherall said.
The Peacock Blue exterior of the Rose Phantom is accentuated by a Charles Blue twinned-coachline that intertwines like the stem of a rose. The wheels also echo the design and are adorned with a twinned pinstripe, also in Charles Blue.
In the cabin, the Phantom Rose is illustrated in varying stages of maturity, from bud to full bloom, in an asymmetrical design that looks like it’s growing across the roof lining, from the rear of the car. The remarkable starlight headliner illuminates the scene as the roses are combined with individually placed fibre-optic lights. The Phantom’s Gallery, created as a centrepiece of the interior, has stems of embroidered roses climb through the glass fronted fascia.
Rolls-Royce says the patron’s family also played a creative role with his wife designing the umbrellas whilst his daughter, Magnolia (two of four children named after flowers), defined the exterior hue of this Phantom. “I wanted to have flowers and roses everywhere. It became an amazing piece of art,” the buyer is quoted as saying.
