One colour above all still consistently exerts a special fascination and powerful allure when applied to Rolls-Royce motor cars – just as it has throughout the marque's long history. Black.
Throughout history, Rolls-Royce clients have had a strong desire for self-expression: one of the principal reasons they are drawn to Rolls-Royce, which offers peerless opportunities to push boundaries, redefine what's possible and challenge established convention. While Rolls-Royce is renowned for developing new colour palettes, the colour black has long been associated with power, strength and authority. It is intense and substantial. Black also speaks of elegance and confidence.
Rolls-Royce first debuted Black Badge with Wraith and Ghost in 2016, followed by Dawn in 2017 then Cullinan in 2019 for a new segment of clients wanting to drive themselves. Today, a new, Post Opulent expression of Black Badge joins the family. The purest and most technologically advanced Black Badge motor car yet, Black Badge Ghost.
The Asia Pacific region now has one of the highest proportions of Black Badge in the world. Clients are now increasingly familiar with the mathematical symbol that represents a potential infinity, which is found within the motor car's interior. This graphic, also known as the Lemniscate, was applied to Sir Malcolm Campbell's record-breaking Rolls-Royce-powered Blue Bird K3 hydroplane and the marque's designers nominated this hallmark for Black Badge motor cars to reflect their own unrelenting pursuit of power.
A new generation of clients desired a Rolls-Royce that was agile, discreet, highly connected and free of any superfluous design. A minimalist new Ghost which is not just the most technologically advanced Rolls-Royce yet, but also the most aesthetically pure. In the twelve months since this motor car has been available, it has become one of the fastest-selling products in the marque's history, representing more than 3,500 commissions worldwide.
Clients are free to select any of the marque's 44,000 'ready-to-wear' colours or create their own entirely unique Bespoke hue. However, the overwhelming majority of women and men who requested this darker expression of Ghost have selected the signature Black. To create what is the motor car industry's darkest black, 100lbs (45kg) of paint is atomised and applied to an electrostatically charged body in white before being oven dried. The motor car then receives two layers of clear coat before being hand-polished by a team of four craftsmen to produce the marque's signature high-gloss piano finish.
The iconic Rolls-Royce hallmarks such as the high-polished Spirit of Ecstasy and Pantheon Grille have been 'subverted'. Instead of simply painting these components, a specific chrome electrolyte is introduced to the traditional chrome plating process that is co-deposited on the stainless-steel substrate, darkening the finish. Its final thickness is just one micrometre – around one hundredth of the width of a human hair. Each of these components is precision-polished by hand to achieve a mirror-black chrome finish before it is fitted to the motor car.
The exterior treatment resolves with a Bespoke 21-inch composite wheelset. Designed in the Black Badge house style and reserved for Black Badge Ghost, the barrel of each wheel is made up of 22 layers of carbon fibre laid on three axes, then folded back on themselves at the outer edges of the rim, forming a total of 44 layers of carbon fibre for greater strength. A 3D-forged aluminium hub is bonded to the rim using aerospace-grade titanium fasteners and finished with the marque's hallmark Floating Hubcap, ensuring the Double R monogram remains upright at all times. To celebrate the material substance and remarkable surface effect, a lightly tinted lacquer is applied to protect the finish but still allow clients to observe the technical complexity of the wheel's unique carbon fibre construction.
Black Badge has been designed to be an experience. The clients who requested this motor car demanded that the Bespoke treatment of Black Badge Ghost extend from the design atelier into the marque's engineering department. In doing so, the Bespoke Collective of designers, engineers and craftspeople collaborated to create a vivid driving personality that matched Black Badge Ghost's visual intent without compromising the marque's effortless ride proclivities and exhaustive acoustic tuning.
Key to its potent character is the Architecture of Luxury, Rolls-Royce's proprietary all-aluminium spaceframe architecture that debuted with Phantom. This sub-structure not only delivers extraordinary body stiffness, but its flexibility and scalability allowed Ghost to be equipped with all-wheel drive, four-wheel steering and the award-winning Planar Suspension system. For Black Badge, these peerless engineering qualities have been comprehensively re-engineered, including the fitting of more voluminous air springs to alleviate body roll under more assertive cornering.
To bolster confidence when exploiting Black Badge Ghost, the braking bite point has been raised and pedal travel decreased. Non-Black Badge Ghost is provisioned with a robust braking hardware package that was deemed more than ample under extreme conditions, even accounting for the Black Badge alter ego's increased power output. However, a new suite of bold high-temperature brake calliper paint colours has been developed in preparation for forthcoming Black Badge Ghost commissions.
Black Badge Ghost is available to commission now.
Pricing in Singapore starts from SGD 1,468,888 (without COE). Rolls-Royce motor cars are commissioned, pricing is dependent on specification.
