Is this the most beautiful car of the past century?
Arcadia Droptail is a blend of luxury and subtlety. When an ordinary Rolls-Royce is not enough for you – oh, the horror of it sounds – the latest Droptail is the answer to your needs.
Let's be honest from the start. Did you think of anything other than Rolls-Royce when you saw the title? It's rather possible. Of course, Bentley or some classic Ferrari might have crossed your mind, but let's not kid ourselves – when we talk about the fusion of automotive art, luxury, and engineering perfection, we're talking about Rolls-Royce.
We're not a automotive newsletter (although one of us is an absolute freak about the subject), so let's get straight to the point. The design of this car resembles a luxurious yacht, and the interior has reached another level of using incredibly high-quality materials. What's more, the whole thing – as it is with Rolls-Royce – is very analog. Large screens are nice, but when it comes to luxury, it's just like with watches – real prestige is analog.
Looking at the pictures, you're probably wondering about that ubiquitous wood, so here are a few facts. Rolls-Royce opted for the use of Santos Straight Grain wood, characterized by the finest type of grains among all wood species used in their vehicles. Despite the challenges associated with this delicate material, it was used throughout the entire Droptail model, including the aerodynamically functional rear deck section, where the veneer grain with open pores was laid at the ideal angle of 55°. To achieve the perfect composition of complex geometry, Rolls-Royce craftsmen used a total of 233 wood pieces in the entire Arcadia Droptail, with 76 applied only to the rear deck.
The Arcadia Droptail, which is used globally, especially in tropical climates, underwent rigorous protective tests. Traditional coatings were replaced with a single-application paint that was tested in an extreme weather condition simulator. The testing process lasted 1,000 hours across 18 samples, requiring a total of more than 8,000 hours of work. It is this kind of craftsmanship that I find missing in modern automotive manufacturing.
Let's also talk about the watch you'll find on the dashboard. The Santos Straight Grain veneer includes a timepiece created by the designers and artisans of Rolls-Royce Coachbuild. This unique haute horlogerie watch is the most complicated Rolls-Royce clock face ever created. The clock features an exquisite geometric guilloché pattern in raw metal with 119 phases, serving as a symbolic homage to the brand's heritage. The specially designed clock face also includes partially polished, partially brushed hands, and 12 "chaplets" – which are hour markers – each with a thickness of just 0.1 mm. To ensure the readability of the clock, specialists added a filler bridge to each chaplet and hand-painted them using a camera capable of magnifying the image up to 100 times.
Although many haute horlogerie methods were used to create the clock, the testing and validation standards at Rolls-Royce are higher than those in the world of watches. This required the brand's specialists to use a wide range of materials, such as ceramic coating instead of anodizing, to ensure stability over time and aesthetic appearance. Just like every element in the clock, including the individually crafted 'double R' monograms, they were individually machined from solid steel blocks and hand-polished before assembly.
The Rolls-Royce Arcadia was created in ONLY ONE example, and its price, according to unofficial estimates, is over 30 million dollars!
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