It’s been a century since Rolls-Royce first decided that good taste and subtlety should come in a six-metre package with curtains.
To mark the occasion, the company has built the Phantom Centenary Private Collection - 25 examples of what might be the most intricate, indulgent, and technically unnecessary car interiors ever stitched together by human hands.
This isn’t a new Phantom. It’s a work of self-portraiture. A love letter from Rolls-Royce to itself, written in 24-carat gold leaf, printed silk, and 160,000 stitches of “Golden Sands” thread.
The company describes it as “the most complex and technologically ambitious Private Collection to date,” which is what you’d expect when the seats alone took 12 months to develop with a fashion house.
A century of self-reflection
The Phantom Centenary’s entire purpose is to celebrate 100 years of the Rolls-Royce Phantom - the car that’s ferried kings, dictators, rock stars and billionaires alike.
Inside, the designers have hidden references to just about everyone and everything that’s ever touched the brand.
There’s a nod to “Roger Rabbit” (the codename for the 2003 relaunch), a seagull from the 1923 prototype, and embroidered homages to Sir Malcolm Campbell’s Bluebird Phantom II.
It’s the sort of obsessive archival exercise that makes sense if you’re Rolls-Royce.
Where most carmakers celebrate anniversaries with a special badge and some nice paint, Rolls has gone all in on laser-etched leather, marquetry depicting Sir Henry Royce’s favourite coastline, and map roads rendered in genuine gold.
Gold, glass and ghosts
The exterior follows the same philosophy. Finished in a two-tone paint called Super Champagne Crystal (which sounds like a cocktail rather than a colour), it shimmers thanks to crushed glass mixed into the clear coat.
The famous Spirit of Ecstasy figurine has been recast in solid gold, hallmarked in London, and enamelled by hand - because after 100 years, a bit of gold plating clearly won’t do.
Even the wheels aren’t spared. Each has 25 engraved lines, one for every car in the series. Collectively, that’s 100 lines. Symbolism, apparently, is standard equipment.
Inside the world’s most detailed lounge
Open the door and you enter what looks like the inside of a Fabergé egg. The rear seats are covered in haute-couture fabric showing Phantom’s greatest hits - 45 individually printed and embroidered panels stitched with microscopic precision.
Rolls-Royce says it took 24 revisions to get the horse motif right. Presumably the horse is exhausted.
Up front, laser-etched leather depicts sketches and codenames from a century of prototypes.
The “Anthology Gallery” on the dashboard features 50 aluminium fins, lit like falling fireworks, each inscribed with quotes from Phantom’s long press-cutting scrapbook.
And then there’s the woodwork. It’s stained Blackwood, carved with maps and routes significant to Phantom’s story - from Royce’s home in West Wittering to a 4,500-mile Australian crossing.
The roads are picked out in gold leaf 0.1 micrometres thick. That’s thinner than the average Rolls-Royce brochure.
Under the bonnet, business as usual
It’s still powered by the brand’s 6.75-litre V12, which feels almost quaint these days. Rolls has marked the occasion by painting the engine cover white and finishing it, naturally, with more gold detailing. Emissions are a faintly comic 353–365 g/km.
But no one buying one of these 25 cars will care. This is the sort of thing that’ll spend its life in a humidity-controlled garage, occasionally started by a white-gloved technician for the sake of keeping the oil moving.
100 years of Phantom
Rolls-Royce says over 40,000 hours of work went into the Centenary project, and you believe them. Whether it’s genius, madness or both probably depends on your view of what a car should be.
But as a statement of confidence - that craftsmanship still matters, and that luxury doesn’t have to mean digital screens and vegan leather - the Phantom Centenary is peerless.
It’s a monument to the idea that excess, when done properly, can still be an art form.
