The Chinese calendar may see 2014 as the Year of the Horse, but Rolls-Royce sees it as the Year of the Bespoke Car. To celebrate, the car maker presented its Suhail Collection; its first bespoke collection to cover all current Rolls-Royce models.
According to Rolls-Royce, the Suhail Collection is named after "one of the brightest star constellations in the sky," though the company is a bit coy about the particulars. Suhail is an old name derived from the Arabic and attributed to a number of stars, most notably Canopus, but Rolls-Royce specifically refers to a constellation and places it somewhere between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Regardless of exactly where or what Suhail is, the company says that it was the inspiration for the 10th-century Arab scholar Ibn al-Haitham, who was author of a pioneering work on optics.
The Suhail Collection is a new direction for Rolls-Royce in that it encompasses the Phantom, Ghost, and Wraith models. Each of the limited run has been customized with a moonstone pearl livery and a Turchese Blue coach line complete with a Suhail star emblem that evokes the color of the night sky.
Inside, the Suhail star emblem motif continues with the design worked into the Ash Burr wood fascia's marquetry and the Crem é Light leather with Turchese accents and the Navy Blue instrument panel top and carpets. Even the dashboard clock is made to fit in with a the "Suhail" Ursa Minor and Major constellation set on the clock face.
Rolls-Royce says that the Suhail Collection is to celebrate the success of its Bespoke Design Studios, which has seen record demand this year with 80 percent of Ghosts, 90 percent of Wraiths, and almost all the Phantoms ending up as custom jobs. These have includes the Chinese-themed Year of the Horse, the globe-trotting design of the Pinnacle Travel, the Sir Malcolm Campbell-inspired Waterspeed, the urban-oriented Metropolitan, and the Maharajah, which reflects a century of demand from India for the upmarket Rollers.
Source: Rolls-Royce