Like a Dreadnought-class battleship, the current generation of the hulking and insanely lavish Rolls-Royce Phantom is being mothballed, but it gets one final hurrah.
The folks behind the Spirit of Ecstasy are busy building — sorry, “crafting” — the ultimate Drophead Coupé and Phantom Coupé vehicles before those models slip the surly bonds of earth.
Just 50 will be made, and Rolls is naming the bespoke collection after those big 1970s televisions you saw in the back pages of National Geographic.
You don’t just buy a Zenith Collection Phantom — you “commission” them, not unlike the aforementioned battleship. And because warships are traditionally launched with a bottle of Champagne broken across the bow, Rolls has added room for a second bottle in its trunk-mounted Champagne fridge, just to keep the party going.
The tailgate of each vehicle is padded with leather to use as a seat for those impromptu booze breakouts, and a folding glass serving table slides right out so the driver can play barkeep.
Oh, and expect to find an extra-special version of the standard picnic hamper in that trunk. This writer can’t help but be reminded of the Avengers episode where John Steed cooks a steak for Emma Peel on the engine block of his 4.5-liter Bentley.
It’s all so glorious, an owner might think they’d died and went to Heaven. With that and mind, each Zenith Edition comes with Rolls’ Starlight Headliner, which replicates the dazzling night sky.
With the next generation of Phantoms switching to an aluminum platform, these final two-doors will leave the factory with a little piece of history — a case containing a chunk of the Goodwood assembly line they were built on, numbered and stamped with the exact place it was removed from.
Also inside that case? Rarefied air.
The Zenith Edition Phantoms will fetch a premium over their stock, run-of-the-mill brothers, so expect a price well above the half-million dollar mark.
[Images: Rolls-Royce]
So what else will they sell?
Coffee?
Grey Poupon is so over.
And look! A drawer with a piece of industrial remnant! I know I surely don’t want some filthy manual labor production implementation inside my motorcar.
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LOL. Made me think of James May, doing a slalom in his Rolls-Royce H.J. Mulliner Park Ward.
“If this car had a monocle, it would fall out now.”
I’m liking the Emma Peel reference.
Good grief, gaudy as you please. I imagine most will end up in Beijing and Dubai.
What sort of person goes to an event with a Rolls and needs to tailgate? Your reserved parking and seating section away from proles are assured.
If they go to the Middle East, they’ll want to offer an option delete on the alcohol server.
They could perhaps put an urn for tea there instead.
hookah?
“What sort of person goes to an event with a Rolls and needs to tailgate? ”
Polo fans, obviously.
Private area near the paddock.
I know this is an easy target, but Steph, as with RR, this is some of your best work. Rarefied indeed!
‘With the next generation of Phantoms switching to aluminum architecture…’
Uh? The current generation Phantom has aluminium body chassis since the Day One…
Teutonic imperial ragtop cobbled by remnant british autoworkers.