Rolls-Royce has been on a roll lately. The company seems hellbent in showing us its most special projects and I can wholeheartedly say I have nothing against that because the stuff they come with in Goodwood is just mind-bending. The latest is the Rolls-Royce Tempus Collection, a new iteration of models with bespoke features and designs inspired by time. Only 20 of these special Phantoms will be made and they are all already spoken for.
The design of the Phantom Tempus Collection includes various themes related to time and the cosmos. One of the focal points is the pulsar, a rare astronomical phenomenon that has been discovered in 1967. It is basically a white-hot star that emits electromagnetic radiation in extremely regular pulses, making them some of the most accurate clocks in the universe. Inside the Phantom, the pulsars are represented by a centerpiece in the Starlight headliner with a unique finish.
The dashboard Gallery hasn’t been left out either. Its design is made of a single billet of aluminum, milled to form 100 individually contoured columns, representing the 100-million-year period of a rotational spin of a pulsar star. Each column is black-anodised and hand-polished to reflect the light. Another interesting tidbit about the dash of these Tempus Collection Phantoms is that the clock is deliberately missing, “to signify patrons’ freedom from time and its limitations.” The glovebox includes an engraved plaque with a quote from Albert Einstein saying “The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion”.
The door panels feature a special design as well, featuring hundreds of perforations, illuminated just like the headliner. On the outside, the Tempus Collection Phantom is painted in a new color, created by the Bespoke division, dubbed Kairos Blue, while the Spirit of Ecstasy on top of the Pantheon grille can be personalized with a date and location as per the customer’s demand.
“Phantom is our pinnacle product, so producing a Collection Car is always a supremely important moment for us and our clients. With Phantom Tempus, our sources of inspiration are on appropriately grand scale: time, deep space, and a theoretical physicist who changed the way we see the universe and our place within it. That all 20 cars have already been reserved indicates that these are themes that truly resonate with our patrons around the world,” said Torsten Müller-Ötvös, CEO, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.
