- This one-off Rolls-Royce Phantom Syntopia was created by the automaker in collaboration with fashion designer Iris van Herpen, who said the concept of “weaving water” inspired the car. This should make it clear what we are dealing with here.
- Starting with Phantom Extended as a base, Syntopia has a bespoke scent—yes, its own special scent—and a one-time paint color.
- The Syntopia is already spoken for and will make its way to anyone’s vehicle collection in May.
If you have to ask, you can’t afford it. In fact, no matter what you ask about the car in question, you still can’t buy it. And if your question is “Why?” We’re not sure we have the answer.
The car in question here is a Rolls-Royce Phantom called the Syntopia. Iris Van Herpen, whose most recent fashion collection featured models plunging into water to show off the clothes, collaborated with Rolls-Royce to customize a Phantom Extended inspired by the concept of “weaving water,” Van Herpen he said. Rolls-Royce calls the car a “bespoke masterpiece,” and it’s clearly intricate. We believe the company’s statement that the project took four years from concept to completion.
Designer Iris van Herpen with Syntopia.
Of course, you’re free to view this less as a work of art and more as an exercise in exploring fanciful “luxury” ideas using someone else’s money. While this could apply to many Rolls-Royce vehicles, we don’t think we’re exaggerating, as this is the first Rolls with its own bespoke scent (developed with input from the client who ordered the car), and the paint is a Hai – off color, liquid noir. The scent enters the cabin through a patented scent-releasing mechanism in the headrests.
Inspired by haute couture, or “the art of fashion”, in Van Herpen’s words, Syntopia took its name from Van Herpen’s 2018 collection. For her part, Van Herpen said she wanted the car to create in the driver or rider the feeling that they are “being overwhelmed by the forces of nature.”
The exterior of the Syntopia is a purple, curved tech that enhances the elegant Phantom’s design. The rainbow colors have blue, magenta and gold tops, the company said. Liquid Noir paint starts with a solid black paint that is covered by a clear-coat outer layer with a color-changing overlay and integrated pigment. It took Rolls several months to develop this new paint, requiring more than 3000 hours of testing and validation.
The interior uses pieces and designs created by Rolls-Royce Bespoke Collective at Goodwood and Van Herpen’s team members in Amsterdam. The front seats are covered in Magic Gray leather, and the rear seats have silk-blend fabric. The Weaving Water Starlight headliner uses a single piece of leather shaped into a 3D design thanks to a woven nylon fabric that resembles the “liquid metal” texture of silver. Inside are also 162 “delicate petals made of glass organza” and nearly 1000 sparkling fiber-optic “stars”. Rolls said it took approximately 700 collective hours to install the headliner alone, including the time it took its designers to select this particular sheet of “flawless leather” from more than 1,000 skins. Not sure what Van Herpen meant by “overwhelmed by the forces of nature”.
Phantom Syntopia will find a home in the client’s private collection in May. Rolls-Royce has promised that it will never copy this vehicle.
contributing editor
Sebastian Blanco has been writing about electric vehicles, hybrid and hydrogen cars since 2006. New York Times, Automotive News, Reuters, SAE, Autoblog, InsideEVs, Trucks.com, Car Talk, and other outlets. His first green-car media event was the launch of the Tesla Roadster, and since then he has been tracking the move away from gasoline-powered vehicles and exploring the new technology’s importance not only to the auto industry, but to the entire world. have been , Throw in the recent shift to autonomous vehicles, and there are more interesting changes happening than most people can wrap their heads around. You can find him on Twitter or on good days behind the wheel of a new EV.