Why The Ultra-Rich Spend Millions On Custom Rolls-Royces (with Supercar Blondie) | Well Spent

0:04 This artisan will spend 7 and 1/2 hours recreating the night sky on the ceiling of this Rolls-Royce. But, it isn't just any night sky. She's specifically replicating the stars over southern England on January 1st, 2003. >> It does contain 1,040 holes, which means that every single hole I have to manually drill. >> This feature alone starts at over $10,000 and it's one of the thousands of detailed customizations Rolls-Royce offers. An entry-level Rolls-Royce begins at around $370,000, but with so many options to personalize, the price can skyrocket from there. Some collectors don't even keep track of how much they spend.

0:46 >> Yeah, I don't I don't even know. Oh, we don't care. As of right now, we have three, you know, and my husband's like, "No, no more." >> The automaker's $30 million drop tail and $28 million boat tail are reportedly the most expensive cars ever commissioned. In some cases, the work doesn't stop there. >> >> Buyers will spend more taking their Rolls-Royces to outside companies for even more customizations. >> >> When I got the Spectre from Rolls-Royce, it was $625,000, and then the upgrade with Mansory was about $700,000.

1:23 >> So, what exactly are Rolls-Royce customers paying for? And what makes buyers come back for more? >> When our clients interact with us, they don't need a car. They've typically got lots of cars. They want to create a masterpiece, and that could be happening here. >> For VIP and select American clients, it's where creating a bespoke Rolls-Royce begins. >> When a client first walks in, the first thing I notice about them is their energy. It is kind of kind of like mind reading.

1:55 Some clients, when they walk in, they don't know what they want. Rebecca knows what she wants. >> I'm a purple girl. I love my cars purple. I also like them to stand out. >> She's here with her husband Carey, who enjoys the experience as much as the cars. >> We were expecting an office environment and then the first thing when I walked in it was like, "No, this is like a house." >> Yes, definitely. >> You you feel comfortable.

2:19 >> Rebecca has already commissioned two cars with the design staff here. >> One of our cars that we have is this Anthilla. They did one of 10. >> Today, Rebecca is back for her third custom car, a purple Cullinan SUV. >> And the detail, can I see the detail of the Yes, see. And there you can see the shine, too. And I didn't know about the designs that you could do inside the leather, the perforations. >> Rolls-Royce's perforation technique involves punching thousands of precisely sized holes into leather to make complex 3D patterns.

2:56 >> The interior really reflects the outside >> >> of the two-tone, Arctic White being on the top and then the Twilight Purple being the body color. I can actually imagine Rebecca wearing like an outfit that's this combination. >> Oh, yeah, definitely. >> Getting to know each client well enough to build a car for them is the hardest part of the job. Then comes the actual design work. >> Everything starts with a pen and paper for me and I got like two sets of monitors and then also I've got my laptop and then another rendering tower and a Cintiq, which is like a touch screen monitor.

3:38 >> The Cullinan starts at over $440,000, but with all the customizations, the final price >> Yeah, I don't I don't even know. But we don't care. We know. >> >> Designs like these come together overnight. A bespoke Cullinan can take 9 to 12 months on average. Rebecca will be back soon to start planning her fourth car, a coach-built Nightingale. Rolls-Royce is only manufacturing 100 of them, and the price is expected to start around $9.5 million.

4:12 And with deliveries beginning in 2028, her Nightingale will take years. >> It's a feeling that you get when you see, you know, the amount of work that you put into it, picking the colors, the inside of it. You just sort of know. You're excited about it. It can't come quick enough. >> But turning Rebecca's dreams into real cars takes an extraordinary amount of human labor. At the Rolls-Royce factory in Goodwood, England, that labor still happens mostly by hand.

4:40 >> This is the only place in the world where we build these fantastic motor cars. It's It's very much like a I would say like a ballet. >> Speed is not a priority here. >> We've been doing it here at Goodwood since 2003. back then, we finalized one car per day of the 200 cars per year. Today, we have a the capacity to finalize up to 28 cars per day. >> That factors out to between 5,500 and 6,000 cars a year. For comparison, Bentley makes up to 15,000 annually.

5:16 >> We never measure volume. For us, it's all It's all about the value, and the value we add for the client, the value we add to to the company. >> Each vehicle moves through 44 distinct stations. At high-volume car factories, each stage takes as little as a minute. Here, the average is 32 minutes. Workers spend months training on each station before they're cleared to work on a car. By the time a car reaches the end of the line, more than 90 pairs of hands have touched it during roughly 600 hours of labor.

5:49 Just about everything on each car can be customized starting with the paint job. >> We do offer 44,000 different colors. If you are not happy with one of those, we can create a color unique for you and it will be yours and yours only and you will also be able to give the color a name. >> Color isn't the only way clients customize their paint job. There's also the famous Rolls-Royce coachlines that can start at over $1,000.

6:16 >> Painting the coachline is one of the very last things we do when we produce a Rolls-Royce and it is exactly 3 mm wide. It can take up to 3 hours per side to be do the actual painting and as you can feel it's on top of the of the paint and very often what you see is that the color of the coachline is is matched to some of the color of the interior or other little details as as well.

6:42 >> Inside each vehicle, there's even more opportunity for customization. One of the most iconic features of a Rolls-Royce is the star-studded ceiling. >> Welcome to the most romantic area in Rolls-Royce starlight headliners. >> Just one of Rolls-Royce's famous starry skies takes about 7 and 1/2 hours to complete. The one that Yolanta is working on today resembles the night sky on the date that Goodwood first opened. After mapping out the stars on a premium leather canvas, it's time to drill.

7:12 >> It does contain 1,040 holes which means that every single hole I have to manually drill. >> Once drilling is finished, Yolanta hand weaves fiber optic strands into the holes. >> I enjoy threading the most patient part of building a headliner. >> Then she trims the strands to create the stars. >> The brightness of the stars, they are different. So, when cutting I do use two, three cutting styles. So, press very deeply, slightly, or simply slide, which helps us to create more natural starlight constellation.

7:51 >> >> In recent years, Rolls-Royce has introduced shooting stars as an optional feature of its starlight headliner. >> So, we have eight shooting stars, and they shoot randomly in a car roughly like in 5 to or 8 seconds depending on the LED programming. >> Embroidering is another avenue for personalization. Seats, door panels, and arm rests can all be customized with bespoke designs. >> We have cars with more than a million stitches in them.

8:22 I would say inspiration from flowers and and flora is quite popular. >> But, it's the Goodwood marquetry team that creates some of the most impressive masterpieces. >> Our clients can choose from approximately 30 different sets of woods, but we do offer up to 20,000 different combinations. >> Specialists like Audrey create bespoke wooden artwork for the doors, dashboard, and interior panels. She has 15 years of experience in marquetry. Her work is done using wooden veneers that are exactly 4.6 mm thick.

8:57 >> What is interesting is being able to choose different type of veneer. So, we have oak there, we have walnut, so we have different texture, different grain. >> Once a design is finalized, the veneers are laser cut into hundreds, even thousands of individual pieces. Each piece is inspected, positioned, and assembled by hand like a puzzle. Even the smallest misalignment can affect the finished image. >> So, depending on the complexity of the pattern, it can be like done within a few hours, or then it can be days of of assembling.

9:34 >> After assembly, the The undergoes multiple rounds of sanding, finishing, and inspection. It's then polished until the seams between individual pieces become nearly invisible. >> New materials, all of them veneers, so we can have metal, we can have mother-of-pearl, and so we need to figure out how to cut them because they don't have the same properties. >> And the team at Rolls-Royce is always experimenting with new techniques to get the perfect finish. >> Same process, same veneers, but we did them in a frying pan full of hot sand, which gives the 3D effect.

10:09 >> Audrey also has a special place in her heart for this particular design. >> Bailey was a customer's dog, really loved dog, so now he has his portrait in a Spectre, and I think Bailey, the actual Bailey, is very happy. >> Customization has always been part of Rolls-Royce's DNA, even if it wasn't the one doing the customizing. Originally, the company only sold the chassis and engine.

10:39 Wealthy customers would then hire independent coach builders to create the unique bodies. This meant no two cars were exactly alike. Rolls-Royce launched its first car, the Silver Ghost, in 1906 for around $5,000, or nearly $180,000 today. In 1949, Rolls-Royce built its first complete car, body included. But the golden era didn't last. In 1971, Rolls-Royce went bankrupt. By the early '90s, annual sales had crashed from 3,300 cars a year to fewer than 1,400.

11:14 Forbes called it a charity case. Then, in 1998, BMW stepped in. The automaker bought the name and built a factory in Goodwood, England. At its new headquarters, BMW didn't just modernize the engineering. It revived Rolls-Royce's long tradition of bespoke craftsmanship, expanding the brand's ability to build cars tailored to each customer's tastes. Today, nearly every car leaving the Goodwood factory includes some level of personalization. For its most exclusive clients, Rolls-Royce has even revived coachbuilding.

11:49 Cars like the Sweptail, Boat Tail, Droptail, and upcoming Nightingale aren't modified production models, they're custom-built from top to bottom. But even with the seemingly unlimited list of bespoke features Rolls-Royce offers, some clients want customizations the company can't provide. One of those clients is automotive influencer Alex Hirschi, better known as Supercar Blondie. >> I never thought I would own a Rolls-Royce. >> With millions of followers across social media, she's one of the most well-known figures in the car world.

12:21 After years of highlighting newly released Rolls-Royce cars in her videos, she finally bought a Rolls-Royce Wraith in 2020. >> Oh, bright orange Spirit of Ecstasy. The first moment in a Rolls, I was like, what is this sorcery? It is magic. It is like you're floating on a cloud. >> Just 4 years later, she replaced it with the automaker's latest model. >> When I saw the Spectre, I just thought it was one of the most beautiful Rolls-Royces.

12:54 >> Like many Rolls-Royce customers, Alex spent hours selecting colors, materials, and personalized details. But once she was finally behind the wheel, she decided even that wasn't enough. >> My original spec was black, and on the inside was a three-tone. Absolutely loved it. But then Mansory came along, >> >> and I was like, yeah, let's go for it. Let's do something crazy.

13:25 >> Mansory is a German aftermarket company that transforms ultra-luxury cars with custom bodywork, interiors, and paint finishes. >> Mansory is known for being a little bit loud, right? A bit aggressive with their styling and their looks. So, they offered, you know, the the lowering of the car, the widening of the body panels, the accents of the wing, the the side skirts. Just gives it a little bit more of a mean look. >> The first thing Mansory delivered on was color. Like Rebecca, Alex had a special shade of purple in mind when she went to Rolls-Royce.

14:02 >> They said, "If you get this specific color, you're going to need to wait a year." The first thing I told Mansory is I want this color. It's like a beautiful purple color. They actually call it Boracay Blue. And I said, "Can you get this color?" He said, "Yes." I'm like, "Right. I'm in." I gave the car to Mansory literally after a few months. And then I went away. I spent some of my summer in France. And then when I came back, it was ready.

14:29 >> The result was a one-of-a-kind Spectre featuring that custom paint color and a Supercar Blondie logo integrated into the car's exterior and dashboard. >> I love the personalization. With the coach line that they could incorporate my branding into the coach line on the outside of the car. You'll notice here on the side that it is the Equista edition, one of one. So, this is the only Rolls-Royce Spectre in the world that looks exactly like this.

15:01 >> It also includes a completely redesigned hood made from a rare carbon fiber. >> So, this is special purple carbon fiber that took 3 months to make because you've got to make sure that all of these lines perfectly line up from this side of the car all the way over here. >> So, what was the final cost? >> When I got the Spectre from Rolls-Royce, it was $625,000. And then the upgrade with Mansory was about $700,000.

15:36 So, it actually cost more for the upgrade than the original car. I loved the Rolls-Royce before, from factory, but I love it way more now. Every time I walk past that car, I love I just I stare at it. >> >> That's the feeling you want when you buy a car. One thing that I absolutely love about driving a Rolls-Royce is all of my road rage disappears. Like, I do not care if it takes me an extra 10 or 20 minutes to get somewhere because I'm so comfortable in this car, and you just feel like driving it a little bit slower. It's just so beautifully luxurious.

16:16 >> In a world where the ultra-wealthy can buy almost anything, Rolls-Royce sells something harder to acquire. The feeling that something was made specifically for you. >> It's just a different level of luxury, yeah. >> There's been a very clear trend in luxury where either it's an experience or you're creating something which has personal resonance. >> It's a trend the company is heavily betting on. Rolls-Royce is spending $400 million to double the size of the Goodwood plant so it can provide more of that luxury.

16:50 >> We need more space not to build more cars, but enable to actually do more bespoke commissions and to do more special special projects. >> While buyers like Rebecca keep coming back, the brand's customer base is also expanding. For the new Spectre EV, over 40% of owners were first-time Rolls-Royce buyers. Their average age was 35. >> We've seen a clear shift in our clientele. In 2010, average age for Rolls-Royce clientele 56. Today is it's 43.

17:20 In 2010, we had roughly 1% of female drivers. Today it's more than 50% and still increasing. >> Ultra high net worth individuals are accruing their wealth more quickly today than ever before. They're buying a Rolls Royce because they want something which is remarkable.