The ultimate automotive luxury isn?t 40-way adjustable seats with a choice of tantric massage functions, a built-in minibar, or even the opportunity to fly your heraldic flag from the front fenders of your car. Rather, according to Rolls-Royce CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös, it?s exclusivity?which is why the British luxury automaker is planning a dramatic expansion of the number of bespoke options it will offer well-heeled buyers.
?For me, the future of luxury is that you have to get more and more bespoke,? Müller-Ötvös told us at the launch of the new Phantom. ?People in this segment want to have something extremely special, something significantly different from what their friend has.?
While the one-off Rolls-Royce Sweptail proved that there is a market for ultralimited models, Müller-Ötvös said its development was too complicated for similar projects to be done more than occasionally. ?That was a very successful experiment,? he said, ?but it took us four years. You need to meet homologation. There are so many legal requirements you need to make. But after we launched it, I immediately had a couple of calls saying, ?I want to be involved in the next one, please.? The market potential is not the problem. The challenge is to make it happen and ultimately to have the right capacity for this kind of project.? But Rolls-Royce?s new aluminum spaceframe architecture, known officially as the Architecture of Luxury, gives much more flexibility for limited-run models and also ...