Rolls-Royce Droptail 'La Rose Noire' Is a Gorgeous and Very Expensive Tribute to Love

Roll-Royce launched the Coachbuild program with the 2017 Sweptail, which segued gloriously and somewhat controversially into the Boat Tail, the first unit of which became the world's most expensive new car and was presumably designed on commission for billionaire showbiz power couple Beyonce and Jay-Z.

August 19, 2023, marks the launch of the 4-unit limited series of the Droptail, with La Rose Noire being the first unit on display.

La Rose Noire made its limited debut when it was presented to the new owners at a private event during Monterey Car Week in Pebble Beach, CA. It is the culmination of four years of hard work by the team at Rolls-Royce, working in close collaboration with the two owners so that it became a reflection of their passions, their love for each other, art, automobiles, and champagne.

At the same time, it became a work of art in itself and a testament to the designers and craftsmen with Rolls-Royce.

La Rose Noire is a roadster with a two-seater configuration that's a first in Rolls-Royce's modern history, but with deep roots in the past, specifically to the hotrods of the 1920s and the lavish personality of a Great Gatsby type. It's dark, dramatic, romantic, and impressive all at once.

The name comes from the velvet-like hybrid Black Baccara Rose originating from France, whose softness and color the Droptail tries to replicate both inside and out. In inclement weather, the roadster becomes a coupe thanks to a removable hard roof.

Wood and leather and paint for a non-literal, motorized interpretation of a rose

The commissioning couple had very specific demands regarding their new car – as one does when one pays a reported £25 million ($31.8 million) for a ride. They wanted it to be a tribute to their enduring love but also a reflection of their passion for art, luxury champagne, and horological excellence, and they wanted all this to come wrapped in a "package" that brought to mind comparisons to the beautiful Black Baccara Rose.

That was a challenging brief, but one that Rolls-Royce aced with this first Droptail. The exterior coachwork is painted a special shade of red called True Love, which took over 150 iterations to get just right, as it's able to capture the changing colors of the Black Baccara Rose. This hybrid rose appears a dark pomegranate from a distance, but it translates to a rich red with a pearlescent shimmer in direct light.

A special Hydroshade dark finish is used for the Pantheon Grille to add the "noire" trait of the vehicle. The 22-inch alloy wheels are finished in Mystery paint that appears black at a more casual glance but shows shimmering dark red undertones upon closer inspection.

As special as La Rose Noire might seem from the outside, it's even more breathtaking inside, where the cocoon-like interior is rendered exclusively in leather, wood, and carbon fiber. A wraparound parquetry that extends from the rear of the seats to the dashboard is Rolls-Royce's most elaborate piece ever. It's an abstract rose motif created out of 1,603 pieces of Black Sycamore veneer, 533 of which are painted red to symbolize scattered rose petals.

This piece alone required two years of development and nine full months of craftsmanship, where the single craftsman working on it labored in one-hour working sessions for no more than five hours a day in a sound-proof room, allowing for maximum concentration. Only the "petal" pieces are painted, the others have tonal variety through their natural color.

The seats are leather in dark red Mystery and lighter red True Love colors, with a subtle copper shimmer to evoke the pearlescent shimmer on the rose petals. A cantilevered armrest covers the infotainment controller and creates a sleeker, almost minimalist, but very lush, decadent-like interior.

Even more personal touches

There is no single one jewel in the crown of this Droptail: the Droptail itself is meant to be that. But the Audemars Piguet timepiece encased in the dashboard comes very close to it. It's actually a wearable AP Royal Oak Concept timepiece that does double service as a dash clock and wearable piece and was a special request by the male owner. As such, it, too, is a fully-custom piece.

The 43mm Royal Oak Concept Split-Seconds Chronograph GMT Large Date features a self-winding Calibre 4407 movement with a flyback chronograph and a split-seconds mechanism. The timepiece is color-matched to the Droptail, with a red inner bezel and red counters, and a black dial.

When it's removed from the dash and placed on the matching strap (otherwise held in a leather pouch inside a special compartment), the aperture in the dash is covered with an openworked blank head with a rose engraving – also by Audemars Piguet and the only literal rose interpretation inside the cabin.

The second special request was for a matching Rolls-Royce Champagne Chest, which features the same scattered petal parquetry and holds an "intricate" champagne set, including a serving trailer, hand-blown crystal champagne flutes, and two hammocks for just as many bottles of the owners' special edition of Champagne de Lossy. Carbon fiber and aluminum champagne coolers finished in the same Mystery shade keep the bottles at perfect serving temperature.

Don't judge a Rose by its petals

La Rose Noire aims for perfection in design and craftsmanship, but that's not to say performance is relegated to an afterthought. Power comes from a twin-turbo 6.6-liter V12 engine upgraded to deliver 593 hp and 840 Nm (620 lb-ft) of torque and mated to an 8-speed automatic transmission with manual override.

The car has personality and a very striking presence, and not just because of its styling. It's 5.3 meters (208.6 inches) long and 2 meters (78.7 inches) wide and rides on massive 22-inch wheels. Top speed is limited at 155 mph, while 0-to-60 is achieved in 5 seconds.

A $31.8 million Rose, but for who?

This is a bespoke vehicle of the most luxurious kind, so don't expect Rolls-Royce to go boasting about how much money it cost to build. That said, the price tag WILL become a talking point with many auto enthusiasts, if only for the simple reason that this is the kind of car only some one-percenters could afford.

Reports in the British media claim that La Rose Noire cost about $31.8 million, which makes it more expensive than previous Coachbuild iterations – or any other new vehicle, for that matter. This obviously triggers another question: who would pay this kind of money for it?

The only clues available are from Rolls-Royce themselves: the owners are an "international" family with ties to the automobile and the fashion world, with a special kind of love for one particular brand of champagne and one particular type of rose, and – obviously – the budget for such a special commission.

Names being thrown in conversation, based on these clues, aren't that many. One option would be billionaire Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, and wife Helene Mercier. The other would be French billionaire Francois Pinault, owner of the Kering luxury group, and wife Maryvonne Pinault. Both couples are based in France and have been married for decades, and count their francs in the billions.