Your Guide to Accessing The Coachbuild Collection From Rolls-Royce

Barker, Gurney Nutting, Hooper, Thrupp, and Maberley, or any of the glorious coach builders who worked with Rolls-Royce in the glory days of coach building, would have been so proud. In an ultimate act of homage to its own brilliant legacy, Rolls-Royce has launched the Coachbuild Collection. An entirely new super luxury presentation that supersedes the brand’s own Bespoke programme, entry to the Coachbuild Collection is by invitation only via the marque’s Private Office network.

The Coachbuild Collection

The Collection is a limited production motorcar that is authored entirely by Rolls-Royce and created on a completely new canvas, never to be repeated. Needless to say, each will be rare and extravagant and is meant for the rarest of rare clientele who have a special affinity for the brand represented by the Spirit of Ecstasy. 

“This is something the super-luxury world has never seen before. The experience of this programme is inseparable from the motor car itself, and both will be brought to life with the care and ambition worthy of the collectors who inspired them – and of Rolls-Royce itself,” said Chris Brownridge, Chief Executive, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. 

Access to the Coachbuild Collection

A Coachbuild Collection begins with a true coachbuilt motor car: a wholly unique body style formed, built, and handcrafted by Rolls-Royce’s Coachbuild department. These motor cars will be fully homologated, road-legal, and created to be driven. For the first Collection, clients will be granted exclusive access to closed testing facilities, witnessing the motor car’s development across performance and climate extremes. They will travel to locations chosen for their deep connection to this motor car’s story. They will be granted rare access to the innermost design studios within Rolls-Royce. They will be welcomed into the ateliers of master craftspeople from adjacent worlds within super-luxury, whose dedication to perfection mirrors that of Rolls-Royce itself. Clients will also gather in the world’s most desirable destinations for remarkable, curated private events at which the designers behind each collection will share the inspirations and convictions that shaped it.

The first Rolls-Royce Coachbuild Collection will be a fully electric motor car, reflecting the passion that so many clients have for a fully electric Rolls-Royce. Many of the collectors who inspired the Coachbuild Collections programme are existing Spectre owners who celebrate how its electric powertrain elevates the Rolls-Royce experience.

The Coachbuilding Legacy at Rolls-Royce

Coachbuilding is the art and science of creating bespoke bodywork on a pre-assembled chassis. When Charles Rolls and Henry Royce first met in 1904, car manufacturers generally produced only the mechanical components: a ‘rolling chassis’ was sent to specialist coachbuilders, who then added bodywork to the client’s specification. 

As the 1920s dawned, mass-market car makers were bringing coachbuilding in-house, where engineers could address new issues presented by automotive use, such as vibration and torsional stress. Luxury marques like Rolls-Royce, however, continued to outsource coachwork to specialist houses for several more decades.

Until the 1930s, most coachbuilders remained true to long-established practice, which involved assembling a wooden frame, usually in ash, onto which aluminium or steel body panels were either pinned or welded. This allowed almost any shape to be created, with designs based around the interior space and fittings requested by the customer. As their experience grew, materials improved, and motor cars’ speeds increased, coachbuilders adapted their methods, with later frames made from metal tubing or angle-iron.

This essentially traditional form of coachbuilding continued until the separate chassis was replaced by semi-monocoque construction, with sub-frames for the mechanical components. This process made all but the simplest of adaptations to the body design itself impossible.

In the case of Rolls-Royce, this shift occurred in October 1965, when the Silver Cloud series was replaced by the Silver Shadow. Contrary to popular belief, however, this did not mark the end of coachbuilding at Rolls-Royce. The Phantom VI, built on a separate chassis, remained in production, albeit in small numbers, until 1993, with coachwork supplied by Rolls-Royce subsidiary H. J. Mulliner, Park Ward Ltd.

Although in theory a coachbuilt Rolls-Royce could be any shape the customer desired, in practice, there were constraints. Rolls-Royce motor cars were designed on proven technical principles that were, in the minds of the Company’s founders, unarguable and inviolable. By insisting on fixed dimensions for the bulkhead behind the radiator, they were able to ensure the bodywork maintained the essential proportions that visually identified it as a 'true' Rolls-Royce. Those proportions remain enshrined in the marque's design tenets to this day. 

These basic principles allow considerable scope, as evidenced by the highly distinctive forms of Phantom, Ghost, Wraith, Dawn, and Cullinan. Patrons and designers therefore enjoy considerable creative freedom in a coachbuilding project, within these fundamental design parameters.

Bespoke has been central to the marque's offering and experience since production began at Goodwood in 2003. It has proved phenomenally successful, with commissions increasing year-on-year. The first quarter of 2021 saw the landmark moment when, for the first time, every single motor car built at the Home of Rolls-Royce, across the entire model family, included Bespoke elements. It is the unique vision and capabilities of the Bespoke Collective that make Rolls-Royce a true luxury house, not merely an automotive manufacturer. 

Patrons have always been able to personalise their motor car's appearance in myriad different ways – beginning with a choice of 44,000 paint colours. But their options for altering its overall outline have historically been limited by the underlying structure. For this reason, fully coachbuilt Rolls-Royce motor cars have been rarities in the modern era; much of the sensation around Sweptail arose precisely because it was such a unique event. 

The current Phantom was the first car to be built on the marque's proprietary structure. This is an all-aluminium spaceframe chassis, designed and engineered from the ground up to be scalable for a range of different Rolls-Royce models.

Crucially, this flexibility opens up new possibilities for coachbuilding.

This means that Rolls-Royce and its patrons can now look beyond Bespoke and build the car itself, to commission. In this way, it is perfectly aligned with a lifestyle in which the client's investments in luxury, from property, clothing, and jewellery to works of art, yachts, or private aircraft, are personal, individual, and unique.

With the Architecture of Luxury, the marque has ushered in a new coachbuilding movement that encompasses both highly sophisticated 21st-Century technology and materials, and a tradition extending back more than 100 years. It is both evolutionary and revolutionary.