Even Rolls Royce’s entry-level car, the Ghost sedan, will set you back around $350,000, but it looks about as ordinary and affordable as a used Corolla next to the Droptail convertible, which is believed to cost more than $30 million.
Only four of the stunning roadsters are being built, each tailored to suit the whims of its (very) wealthy buyer, and Rolls Royce has just revealed the third in the series. While the earlier Droptail Amethyst featured a moody purple color scheme, and the La Rose Noire that came before it looked like a prop from a burlesque show, the Droptail Arcadia with its calming white paint and earthy wood trim is like a luxury wellness break on wheels.
Rolls’ artisans developed a two-tone color scheme that consisted of a solid white base infused with aluminum and glass particles that is offset by the lower carbon fiber sections, which are painted silver for the first time on a Droptail. But the time that must have been spent in the paint shop is nothing compared to the hours burned to create and finish the Arcadia’s wood trim.
Related: Rolls-Royce Amethyst Droptail Debuts As The Only Car With An Aerodynamically Functional Wood Surface
There are 233 pieces of wood on the car, including 76 on the rear deck alone, and engineers had to use F1 techniques to build a stiff carbon fiber to which the wood could be applied. In total, more than 8,000 hours of development work went into the tree-based detailing. And while that was going on, another team was spending five months assembling the most complex clock face ever fitted to a Rolls Royce, having already put two years of development work into the job.
The automaker’s claim that “the testing and validation standards at Rolls Royce are higher than those of the watch world” will no doubt rub a few people in the horology sector up the wrong way, but even those who know nothing about clocks – me, for instance – can appreciate that there’s something special about the face’s geometric guilloché pattern with its 119 facets. That number is derived from the 119 years in the business Rolls celebrated in 2023, the year the customer first saw a preview of his car.
