Rolls-Royce Motor Cars PressClub · Article.
ROLLS-ROYCE UNVEILS AMETHYST DROPTAIL: AN EXPRESSION OF PURITY, CLARITY AND RESILIENCE
24.08.2023 Press Release
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is honoured to present Rolls-Royce Amethyst Droptail – a breathtaking coachbuilt masterpiece that celebrates its commissioning client’s cultural heritage, family legacy and personal passions.
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Author.
Georgina Cox
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
This article in other PressClubs
- Rolls-Royce Motor Cars presents Rolls-Royce Amethyst Droptail
- Extraordinary coachbuilt project is inspired by the birthstone of the patron’s son
- Incorporates exquisite celebration of painstaking craft and focussed minimalism
- Veneer aft deck is the largest wood surface ever produced by Rolls-Royce
- Rear section is the only aerodynamically functional wood surface on a new motor car
- Precious amethyst gems are incorporated into interior and exterior
- First time both brushed and polished finish have been applied to Pantheon grille
- Finish inspired by haute horlogerie, referencing client’s Vacheron Constantin timepiece
- Unveiled to commissioning client at private event in Gstaad, Switzerland
“This stunning expression of Rolls-Royce Droptail truly
captures the soul of its commissioning client. This distinguished
and international individual exemplifies connoisseurship, and their
global outlook, refined tastes and deep-rooted heritage were a
broadening pleasure to explore. The extraordinary projection of
their spirit, captured in Rolls-Royce Amethyst Droptail, is a clear
statement of Rolls-Royce Coachbuild’s intent: to collaborate
profoundly as a means to produce an historic expression of applied
art. It is the client’s personal involvement that gives Coachbuild
motor cars their unparalleled strength of character. These products
reflect an exceptional clarity of vision, executed with absolute
conviction. Amethyst Droptail captures these virtues in extremis.”
Torsten Müller-Ötvös, Chief Executive Officer, Rolls-Royce
Motor Cars
“A Coachbuilt Rolls-Royce derives its identity and legend from the
accomplishments, sensibilities and character of its owner. It is
this human dimension, combined with highly progressive design, that
makes it entirely unique and irreplaceable. This specificity gives
every Coachbuild commission a sense of timelessness and artistic
endurance. Within Rolls-Royce design, Amethyst Droptail will stand
in our history as a representation of how accurate our creative
response can be in projecting the soul of an individual
commissioning client through both literal and highly conceptual
expressions of personal luxury.”
Anders Warming, Design Director, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
“Rolls-Royce Amethyst Droptail is the epitome of quiet artistry
and its significance lies in its depth of detail. Together with a
discerning patron whose character resonates throughout the
commission, we explored their sensibilities, cherished pursuits and
values through masterfully curated details, each imbued with
profound symbolic significance. Created for an individual with a
passion for modern design, the minutia of haute horlogerie
techniques and whose family has a special connection to gemstones,
Amethyst Droptail is a remarkable projection of connoisseurship,
contemporary design and personal heritage.”
Alex Innes, Head of Coachbuild Design, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
AMETHYST DROPTAIL
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is honoured to present
Rolls-Royce Amethyst Droptail – a breathtaking coachbuilt masterpiece
that celebrates its commissioning client’s cultural heritage, family
legacy and personal passions.
One of four unique expressions of the Rolls-Royce Droptail,
Amethyst Droptail is a truly elevated expression of applied art,
commissioned by a patron whose family business has grown from a
gemstone boutique to a multinational corporation with diversified
interests. Exceptionally well-travelled, internationally educated and
truly global in their inspirations, the client is an established
patron of the arts, whose collection of precious jewels, significant
motor cars and contemporary artworks are housed in a specially
commissioned private museum.
The patron tasked Coachbuild designers to create an elegant
expression of Droptail inspired by the amethyst gem – the birthstone
of their son and an enduring symbol of purity, clarity and resilience;
themes that are explored throughout this exceptional motor car in
extraordinary depth. The client’s passion for quiet artistry and
subtle flourishes is what defines Amethyst Droptail – a projection of
true connoisseurship that rewards those who study it with beguiling details.
Rolls-Royce Amethyst Droptail was unveiled to the commissioning
client, their family and friends at a private event in Gstaad,
Switzerland – a region of particular significance for the patron.
A FLOWER IN THE DESERT
The patron and co-creator of Rolls-Royce Amethyst
Droptail expressed a profound desire to celebrate the cultural
heritage of their home region. Rolls-Royce Coachbuild designers
responded with an inspiration point that would define this Droptail’s
exterior treatment: the Globe Amaranth wildflower, which blooms in the
desert near one of the client’s homes.
The duotone exterior paint finish captures multiple stages of
the flower’s bloom. The main body colour is a soft purple hue with a
delicate silver undertone, named Globe Amaranth in tribute to the
flower, and is enhanced with fine flecks of powdered aluminium that
reflect the light and create a captivating iridescent finish. A deep
purple Amethyst contrast paint, which is used on the motor car’s upper
coachwork, contains a blend of red, blue and violet mica flakes that
together create a unique mauve colour with a subtle metallic sheen.
In sunlight, the motor car also reveals a gentle hint of mauve
paint on the inside of the 22-inch wheels, providing a subtle but
elegant contrast to the mirror-polished aluminium surface; a touch
that the client compared to the colourful lining of their favourite
bespoke jacket.
The exterior is finished with a subtle but highly complex
treatment to the carbon fibre used to construct the lower sections of
the motor car. The result of two years of development, the marque’s
craftspeople created a chevron pattern book-matched along two axes,
which adds geometric decoration to Rolls-Royce Amethyst Droptail’s
technical exterior surfaces. The carbon fibre itself is finished with
a fine layer of lacquer tinted with Amethyst pigment, which in most
lights reads as body colour. This intricate and technically demanding
detail is hidden until the motor car is closely scrutinised, speaking
of the client’s passion for subtlety and restraint.
DEPTH OF DETAIL
The client’s trust in Rolls-Royce’s artisans to
execute the most challenging flourishes is expressed in the Pantheon
grille treatment. The exterior grille surround and ‘kinked’ vane
pieces are partially hand-brushed and partially hand-polished with a
precise line demarking each finish – a surface treatment that had
never been attempted on this scale before. The concept was suggested
by the commissioning client’s son, a collector of haute
horlogerie who was inspired by the brushed hands of an
historically significant piece in his archive. Achieving the perfect
uniformity in the finishes, as well as the sharpness of contrast
between the finish types, was the result of more than 50 hours of
collective work.
Beneath this extraordinary expression of contemporary
craftsmanship is an intricate lower front air intake. This highly
detailed piece was digitally designed and ‘printed’ in a lightweight
composite and incorporates 202 hand-polished stainless-steel ingots,
each of which has been painstakingly painted by hand in the Globe
Amaranth hue.
The front end is resolved with a Spirit of Ecstasy figurine
surrounded by amethyst cabochons. The cabochon treatment, whereby a
gemstone is shaped and polished into a rounded form rather than
faceted, was requested by the client in order to avoid a conspicuous
sparkle. This subtle detail recalls the client’s early enterprise in
the precious gemstone business.
CELEBRATION OF MATERIALS
Rolls-Royce Amethyst Droptail celebrates the
materials and crafts personally curated by the commissioning client
and his family. The material selection began with a sample of wood
offered by the client – a stunning Calamander Light open-pore wood,
which has a complex texture and long bands of colour.
The colours of the client’s initial wood sample served as the
inspiration for the motor car’s leather treatment – the gently
contrasting leather, in the aptly named Sand Dunes hue, was developed
to perfectly match the caramel strands on the Calamander Light
open-pore wood. Following this, wood specialists were challenged to
source material with bands in precisely the same colour as the
leather, a task that took more than six months to resolve, requiring
specialists to review more than 100 logs before the perfect piece was discovered.
The primary leather hue, named Amethyst, complements the
exterior surface and is finished with a subtle pearlescent lacquer,
reminiscent of the brilliance of the precious gemstone after which the
motor car is named.
For Amethyst Droptail, Rolls-Royce has created the most
extensive wooden surface area in its history, with the material
extending from the motor car’s fascia and doors to the shawl panel,
cantilevered ‘plinth’ centre armrest and onto the aft deck.
In applying wood to the aerodynamically functional aft deck, the
marque’s aerodynamicists and wood specialists worked closely together
to experiment with not just the form of the panel, but with different
wood-grain textures and the precise angle of the placement of the
veneer itself. The result is both an extraordinarily artistic piece
and the world’s only ‘raw’ wooden surface that produces downforce on a
new roadgoing motor car.
A completely new veneering process was developed specifically
for Amethyst Droptail, with each veneer sheet placed upside down to
expose the raw wood texture. Two techniques are combined:
‘bookmatching’ at 55 degrees, in which the sheets of wood mirror each
other, and ‘slip-matching’, in which the sheets of wood are aligned
side by side in sequence, to create a repeating grain pattern for an
organic, natural effect that gives the illusion of a single piece of wood.
To ensure Amethyst Droptail can be enjoyed by its commissioning
client in a variety of climates around the word, the interior wood
parts were tested to meet the same rigorous endurance standards as the
exterior parts. Prior to its final construction, more than 150 samples
underwent over 8,000 hours of testing. This included a full sunlight
exposure simulation and rainfastness assessment, as well as testing
for durability in temperatures ranging from +80°C to -30°C. The deck’s
protective coatings, developed specifically for Amethyst Droptail,
have been granted their own patent.
To complete the interior treatment, the client requested an
elegant addition: the adornment of the rotary dials with rare amethyst
gems. As with the gems at the base of the Spirit of Ecstasy figurine,
they too are shaped in a convex cabochon style rather than faceted.
The stunning depth and clarity of each stone is of a standard usually
reserved for fine jewellery. Each stone was examined by experts within
the client’s organisation before they were personally and individually
approved by the client. The interior suite is resolved with woven
leather floormats – a subtle tribute to the traditional weaving crafts
found for centuries in the souks of the client’s original home region.
BESPOKE, ELEVATED
A removable hard top has been designed to give
Rolls-Royce Droptail two distinct characters: without its roof,
Droptail is a lithe, open-top roadster; with the roof installed, it is
a formidable and dramatic coupé.
The roof incorporates electrochromic glass that allows the
surface to change colour and transparency instantly. The client
challenged Coachbuild designers to develop a glass that would alter
its hue in order to correspond with the colourway of Amethyst
Droptail. In response, the Rolls-Royce Bespoke Collective developed a
unique chameleon effect for its electrochromic glass: when
deactivated, it is completely opaque and has a subtle purple tint,
mirroring the motor car’s Amethyst exterior finish. Once the glass is
activated at the touch of a button, it becomes translucent with a hue
that matches the Sand Dunes leather colour used in the interior suite.
The realisation of this extraordinary flourish required specialists to
experiment with 60 iterations of glass colouring before a perfect
match was found.
A SINGULAR TIMEPIECE
Rolls-Royce Amethyst Droptail fascia is graced with a
unique timepiece commissioned by the client from the renowned Swiss
haute horlogerie maison, Vacheron Constantin. Handmade in
Geneva, the piece, named ‘Les Cabinotiers Armillary Tourbillon,’ has
an intricate hand-wound movement and is securely housed in a specially
designed holder, enabling it to be removed and stored separately from
the motor car if desired. The timepiece features a bi-retrograde
display with instantaneous return of the hours and minutes as well as
a bi-axial tourbillon.
Vacheron Constantin and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars worked closely
together to ensure the forms, materials and colours of the timepiece
were in perfect harmony within the motor car. The instrument dials
combine amethyst-coloured inserts with the partially brushed and
polished finish of the timepiece’s hands. The timepiece is affixed to
a white-gold baseplate with a hand-crafted sunburst guilloché pattern.
AMETHYST DROPTAIL: A PERSONAL PLACE IN ROLLS-ROYCE HISTORY
This extraordinary expression of Rolls-Royce Droptail
is a testament to the commissioning client’s passion for quiet detail,
playfully but meticulously incorporated into one of the most
historically significant Rolls-Royces ever built. It also represents
the marque’s capabilities, not just in realising such a clear vision,
but in artfully harmonising heritage, modernity and soul.
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