Rolls-Royce prefers itself to be considered as one of the elites among the luxury car brands. A Rolls-Royce car is not just about its powerful engine, its speed or anything that ordinarily a luxury car can take pride in. It’s about the class and the style that comes with the car, and owning one speaks volume about yours.
A Class Apart
To own a Rolls-Royce, you can’t just be rich. Rather, you have to be someone who doesn’t really worry about spending a fortune on a car, but worries about what colour it comes in. One may wonder, what makes it so special? Well, when you are driving a Rolls-Royce, or more likely be driven on a Rolls-Royce, it is customized and personalized to such an extent that it is practically a one-off.
“You don’t just purchase a Rolls-Royce, you commission it. A motor car that is yours, and yours alone. Every Rolls-Royce that leaves Goodwood is unique to its owner. Our configurator lets you begin the journey of commissioning your Bespoke Rolls-Royce by designing your vision,”
reads the Rolls-Royce webpage.
The Bespoke Design
Of course, a Rolls-Royce is an engineering marvel. But what makes a Rolls-Royce so special is its feature of customization according to the wishes of a customer. While other luxury car manufacturers are going for electric cars and hybrid cars to grab customer interest, the RR brand is working on doubling its production in what it does best- giving a one-off car to its customer.
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Figures show that in 2016, around 80 percent of Rolls-Royce vehicles were heavily customized, and personalization and bespoke additions added about 20 percent to the purchase price. For 2018 the added price for customization shot up to almost 40 percent.
The Personalized Features
The luxury car manufacturer lets you choose every single feature of your car, from the colour, interior designs, seat leather and even lets you stitch your family crest on the headrests – if that’s something you would want. Customers often come up with bizarre requests and design ideas, and the brand makes it a point that “no request is left unexplored.”
“Customers are increasingly intrigued by all the possibilities we can offer—they want to put their own personal signature on the product. This is super important for us selling extraordinary objects of this caliber.”
– Torsten Müller-Ötvös, the chief executive officer of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd.
With its latest Phantom model, the car has a built-in clear gallery-style box inside the dashboard of your car. You can customize this space to display your individual collections of object d’art such as pricey mechanical watches, family jewels, rare stamps, ivory statuettes, etc. Your usual collector’s stuff that you would want to show off, subtly.
The customization idea is so apparent in the luxury car brand that, the new 2018 Cullinan has space in its core design for you to customize amenities like champagne coolers, picnic baskets, and stuffs like that.
Extent of Personalization
As most customers insist on personalization, they often seek a particular shade in the car’s woodwork, leather finish or paint. As a result, they turn up with the most unusual swatches that range from a shirt and a lipstick to a pair of rubber gloves. Needless to say, we have a pink Rolls-Royce somewhere in the world.
They even source the wood for the customer’s car from the trees on their estate, just to match the car’s woodwork with the buyer’s property.
On one hand, the company faces whimsical requests like fitting a 9-foot surfboard on top of the sedan, decorated with a 24-carat gold leaf; while on the other, they get classy wishes like getting hand-knotted silk rugs that are favoured by the customer.
Customers have often requested to get the car’s ceiling designed in a way to mimic the nighttime sky or have a twinkling headliner to reflect constellations that were visible at the time of the customer’s child’s birth.
Of course, the designers guide the customers and might gently steer them away from clashing tones and trims or even “politely decline” if the request doesn’t meet standards for quality, durability or safety.
But then again, the luxury car brand makes sure that “no request is left unexplored.” And sticking true to their theme, the brand has a history of building a special door in a car and crash testing it, before making another one for the buyer- just because he wanted a thermos installed in the door.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Rolls-Royce Motorcars, Bloomberg Quint, Business Insider
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