Rolls-Royce unveils one-of-three Boat Tail

Rolls-Royces are known to be highly bespoke vehicles. With thousands of paint finishes to choose from, hundreds of interior colour and trim options and many many zeroes worth of optional extras, each customer can tailor their Rolls-Royce to their liking. Now though, Rolls-Royce is taking that a step further with the new Coachbuild program. The program will allow customers to commission cars that are truly bespoke in every aspect and the first of many is this, the Boat Tail.

Rolls-Royce Boat Tail

After the unveiling of the Swept Tail a few years ago, customers persuaded Rolls-Royce to build them a one-off model too. Long story short, that gave birth to the Coachbuild program and the first three customers, all of whom shared an appreciation toward boats, came together with the design team and conceptualised the Boat Tail. All three examples will be distinctly different from one another and the first of the three is this blue one you see here.

At 5.8 metres long, it could possibly pass off as a boat in terms of sheer size, but details like the wooden rear deck is an obvious nod to luxury yachts. The Boat Tail looks majestic in profile, especially with its suicide doors, subtle character lines and tapering rear. The blue-painted rims really set it apart. Even the lighting elements are distinct from other Rolls-Royce models, with the headlights almost harking back to the last-gen Phantom, but with a modern twist. The blue theme carries on in the interior with the two front seats finished in a darker shade, transitioning to a lighter blue for the rear bench. In fact, the leather on the rear is said to have a metallic sheen to complement the metallic flakes in the exterior paint. The Caleidolegno wood seen on the ‘aft deck’ also carries on to the interior, occupying the dash and integrated into the lower half of the cabin.

The interior also features clocks from House of Bovet 1822, a personal favourite of the owner, which have been designed in conjunction with the Rolls-Royce design team to sit perfectly in the Boat Tail.

In total, 1813 new parts were created for the Boat Tail and this also includes one's for touches like the hosting suite at the rear. The hosting suite has cooled storage for the owner’s favourite spirits and glassware to serve them. And in case some bad weather threatens to spoil your party, there’s a parasol integrated into it which opens up to shade you from the sun or provide shelter from a light rain.

Now, you might be asking why Rolls-Royce didn’t think of Coachbuild earlier and the simple reason for that is because Rolls-Royce was stuck between using a BMW-derived platform for some of its cars, with a slightly outdated one for the Phantom line. Now though, the Architecture of Luxury underpins all of its cars and as a scalable platform, it allows Rolls-Royce to change almost all aspects of the car’s dimension, and hence its looks, according to the customer’s choice. Only four points on each corner of the car are set in place. The Boat Tail is just the start of Rolls-Royce’s Coachbuild journey and you can rest assured that we will get to see even more incredible creations in the future.

You can also rest assured that these creations will be very expensive. For reference, the Sweptail sold for a sum close to USD 12 million, which is well north of Rs 80 crore and our guess is that this Boat Tail wouldn’t be too far off that figure either.