You won’t guess how many ‘Centenary’ Phantoms Rolls-Royce is building

The Rolls-Royce Phantom is 100 years old. Not the current one, obviously: the Phantom VIII went on sale in 2017. They didn’t have touchscreens and twin-turbo V12s in 1925. 

But the Phantom has endured through eight generations and 10 decades and remains the flagship Rolls-Royce, and for pretty much the entirety of the nameplate’s life, it’s been the finest luxury car in the world. Fitting then that Rolls-Royce should celebrate it in the only way it knows how: flexing its bespoke luxury muscles.

Welcome to the Phantom Centenary Private Collection. Sounds like a secret club. Sort of is, really. And you might expect there to be 100 members. But no. Rolls-Royce will only build 25 cars to this specification. 

The canvas here is a Phantom Extended: the 2.5-tonne, 563bhp topper of the Rolls range. But onto that, every department of Rolls-Royce has been allowed to really push the boat out.

Take the Spirit of Ecstasy atop the bonnet. She’s solid gold (18 carats underneath for strength, plated in 24-carat gold to finish), hallmarked by a London jeweller, modelled to match exactly the original flying lady casting from 1925.

The two-tone black and white paintjob is a nod to 1930s movie premieres graced by Phantoms before colour movies were the norm. To get the right amount of shimmer, crushed particles of champagne-coloured glass were infused into the clear coat. 

Each of the enormous disc-faced wheels is engraved with 25 concentric lines. And because TopGear.com can count four wheels, we confidently predict this adds up to 100 on the entire car. Centenary bingo!

But it’s inside that Rolls-Royce really went to town. Paying homage to how in the early days of motoring, weather-beaten chauffeurs sat on rainproof leather while the wealthy folk under cover in the back lounged on soft fabrics, the Phantom Centenary also goes for split upholstery. 

And what an upholstery it is. The rear seats are a hand-woven tapestry of overlapping places and moments significant in Phantom history. From the company’s original Conduit Street premises in London to Henry Royce’s oil paintings of southern France, to sketches of every Phantom generation and embroideries of famous Phantom owners, it’s a rich, um, tapestry of historical throwbacks. Seems a shame to fart on it really. 

Rolls calculates the ‘artwork’ of the seats, which are laid across 45 separate panels which need to meet with exact alignment, is made up of 160,000 stitches. And yes, there’s a teddy bear in the back seat if you look closely enough…

Meanwhile, there’s yet more artwork up front. “The leather on the front seats features laser-etched artwork of a rabbit” we’re told, with a straight face. Why is Bugs Bunny in the ultimate Roller? “It’s a nod to ‘Roger Rabbit, the codename for the relaunch of Rolls-Royce in 2003 – to a seagull, the codename for the 1923 Phantom I prototype.” It’s a veritable petting zoo in there. 

It's also a garden. The headlining features a whopping 440,000 stitches, some of which make up a mulberry tree. Rolls’ ‘Bespoke Collective’ were inspired by a photograph of Henry Royce sitting under such a tree in his back garden, discussing plans for the Phantom with his chief engine draftsman and lead test driver. 

There’s loads more up there in the ceiling, but we must instead turn our gaze to the doors, which carries what Rolls-Royce says is the most intricate woodwork it’s ever created.

The stained blackwood uses 3D marquetry, laser-etching and 3D-ink layering (plus lashings of gold leaf) to depict maps of some of the most significant locations in the Phantom’s history, and the journeys it’s made. OK, not lashings of gold. It’s only 0.1 micrometres thick. 

Perhaps lessons learning developing this techniques will be deployed in future versions of the Spectre, Ghost, and even the next-gen Phantom. You get the sense Rolls threw budgets, deadlines and anything else boring out of the window with this series of cars and just set about making the most lavishly detailed birthday surprise a car was ever treated to. 

Well, after 100 years, a card and a cake wouldn’t really do.