That too
Rolls-Royce has presented the latest version of its Droptail models with the Arcadia. The buyer, who paid between 25 and 30 million euros for the custom-made convertible, has one certainty: he will never end up next to the same car at the traffic lights.
What do you do when a classic Rolls-Royce is no longer sufficient as a symbol of your wealth? The British car manufacturer has found an answer to this: the Coachbuild department makes unique examples, where the buyer can choose what his car will look like.
The Arcadia Droptail is the third in a series of four unique roadsters, two-seater convertibles – without a rear seat – measuring 5.3 meters in length. The gem goes from 0 to 100 kilometers per hour in five seconds and the top speed is – rather pro forma – electronically limited to 250 kilometers per hour. As befits a luxury brand, Rolls-Royce is very discreet about the exact price, but it would be somewhere between 25 and 30 million euros.
With the exception of the dark gray hood, the body of the Arcadia is completely white. That seems a bit tacky at first glance, but nothing could be further from the truth, according to Rolls-Royce. The paint contains larger aluminum and glass particles, so that the car shines extra when light falls on it.
The anonymous buyer – said to be a billionaire from Singapore – is clearly a fan of a beautiful piece of wood, because no fewer than 233 pieces of rosewood were used in the interior. It took the British no less than 8,000 man hours to finish it, and it proved to be a particular challenge to make the wood weather-resistant for life.
Two years of work on timepiece
Naturally, the customer’s name is incorporated, but the pièce de resistance in the interior of the Arcadia is probably the unique timepiece, manufactured by Rolls-Royce itself. Part of the clock was painted by hand, and the painter had to use a camera to enlarge the image, according to the carmaker. The timepiece is the most complex that the British say they have ever designed, and it took two years of research and five months of assembly.
The Arcadia Droptail is the successor to the La Rose Noire Droptail, the previous most expensive car in the world with a price tag of around 23.5 million euros. The buyer of that décapotable, delivered in the summer of 2023, turned out to be a romantic soul. The Rolls was painted in ‘True love’ red, and a mosaic of 1,603 pieces of wood veneer was incorporated into the dashboard, inspired by the falling of rose petals. That backseat might have come in handy after all…
