Rolls Royce Sweptail
This is the Rolls-Royce Sweptail. At $13 million it is believed to be the most luxurious new car ever commissioned. The grille is the largest fitted to any modern-era Rolls Royce. It’s milled from a piece of aluminium, before being hand-polished to a mirror shine. Further back you’ve the “swept-tail” that gives the car its name, while Rolls says the way the bodywork wraps under the car “with no visible boundary to the surfaces” is “akin to the hull of a yacht”. Meanwhile the “bullet-tip” centre brake light and lower bumper “combine to create a greater feeling of elegance in motion”.
“Sweptail is the automotive equivalent of haute couture,” Giles Taylor, the director of design for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, said in a statement. “It is a Rolls-Royce designed and hand-tailored to fit a specific customer.”
The Sweptail’s signature feature is a piece glass roof that tapers into the car’s fastback rear end. It’s a design feature that dominates the car’s silhouette.
Rolls-Royce has not released technical specs of the car, but it’s believed to be based on the current-generation Phantom platform, which means some version of the company’s 6.75-liter V-12 is most likely lurking under its long bonnet.
Inside it’s predictably opulent, with much wood, leather, metal and a “hat shelf” with an illuminated lip. Though we have no pics, Rolls claims the dash is its cleanest to date, with a clock made from the thinnest Macassar veneer and machined titanium hands. Two panniers, one on either side, conceal bespoke attaché cases (made to fit the owner’s laptop/tablet from carbon fibre). The centre console also houses a mechanism that serves up a bottle of the owner’s favourite champagne (and rotates it so it’s at the perfect angle to pick up) and two crystal champagnes flutes.
A glass roof floods the interior with natural light – an interior ruled by a philosophy that equates elegance with simplicity. Switchgear is minimal, making way for the richest of materials to rise to the forefront of attention. Polished Macassar Ebony and open-pore Paldao create visual and tactile contrasts with the light Moccasin and Dark Spice leathers of the seats, armrests and fascia surround. An automotive creation built for picnic adventures.
Absolutely elegant
