Rolls-Royce Arcadia Droptail Is a $30+ Million One-Off That Took Five Years To Build

The owner of the Arcadia commissioned the car five years ago, and the strict demand – one of many – was that the final product be as close as possible to the sketches. Needless to say, this Droptail – the third in a series of four uniquely crafted examples in the series – is an obscenely opulent two-seater. The name fell straight out of Greek mythology: Arcadia is a mountainous region of ancient Greece, traditionally known for the contented pastoral innocence of its inhabitants. Metaphorically, it is synonymous with ‘Heaven on Earth’.

Even the wealthy need to escape from the madding crowd of money-immune earthlings that don’t swim in fortunes and millions, so the customer – secreted by Rolls-Royce for obvious reasons – decided that a car would be the perfect teleporting pad toward inner peace and outer frippery.

The exterior is dressed in white – a unique hue developed by Rolls-Royce’s Coachbuild division – with the paint enriched with fine particles of glass and aluminum that create an illusion of infinite depths when the sun's rays hit the car just right. The carmaker retorted to blending larger aluminum grains in the compound to allow the silver hue to silver to contrast against the white in color and saturation.

The customer – as explained by Rolls-Royce’s press release (attached to this story) – wished for the car to separate its occupants from the surrounding world (symbolically) and to not draw all the attention when driving by. With that being said, the checklist included mirror-polished wheels and the fabled radiator grille.

Like any Rolls-Royce ever, the Arcadia is rich in wood, but there’s a catch: 233 individual pieces of wood are used throughout the car, treated with a special sun- and rain-proof coating that will allegedly last forever. A special weather simulator was developed to expose the wood to artificial elements for over 1,000 hours. In total, the trim pieces took 8,000 hours from concept to finished product.

The interior color is named after the client and reserved exclusively for their future use in other Rolls-Royce models they’ll buy. The clock on the center fascia is the most complex Rolls-Royce clock face ever created: it took two years of research and development, and the assembly required five months to complete. The clock face contains polished-and-brushed hands and 12 or hour markers one-tenth of a millimeter thick.

Although the price for this one-of-a-kind Rolls Royce is kept a close secret, several sources cite a range between £25 million and £30 million ($33 to $38 million). The car is powered by a 6.75-liter twin-turbocharged V12 593 bhp (601 PS) with an eight-speed automatic gearbox. Over 2.5 tons in weight, the car allegedly hits 62 mph (100 kph in around 5 seconds, with a limited top speed of 155 mph (250 kph).