Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin, Morgan and Ferrari have legendary coach building heritage. But, in an automotive world governed by high-tech integration, a long checklist of safety requirements and multi-brand parts compatibility in the name of cost cutting, coachbuilding has been mostly lost.
Rolls-Royce has brought it back in recent years, developing a one-off program that created unique models for high-paying customers.
Now, the British brand, a part of BMW Group, is going even further, offering 100 custom-built vehicles its most prominent and prestigious design-minded customers. The automaker recently doubled the size of its Goodwood, England production site.
For this project, Rolls-Royce entered a multi-year design and experience process with its clients that goes far beyond what any customer-company experience the company has ever rolled out in the past. Commissioning clients are even more in touch with the design and details process of their bespoke models, and have been welcomed into the larger Rolls-Royce ecosystem with exclusive access to company events.
“It is the whole experience our clients crave. Particularly with the Coachbuild projects, the experience is as important as the end commission itself. Participation in the Nightingale Coachbuild Collection is an experience only 100 individuals in the world will ever have,” Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Chief Excecutive Chris Brownridge told Newsweek. “What is special about Rolls-Royce is that everything we do is personal, whether in what we create or how we interact with our clients. Rolls-Royce Coachbuild is the perfect embodiment of this relationship.”
Each one of the electric vehicles rides on the same architecture as Rolls-Royce’s other models. Unlike those other models, the Project Nightingale cars, as they are known, are two-seater cabriolets.
Rolls-Royce has sold convertibles in the past, most recently the four-seater, four-door Dawn, which saw its production end in 2023.
The design of the project’s cars was influenced by Rolls-Royce models of the Jazz Age, when Art Deco design was at its pinnacle. Its size is a nod to the Phantom Drophead Coupé of the past, with the new car’s length the same as the Phantom sold to Rolls-Royce customers today.
Its exterior is directly influenced by the one-off Rolls-Royces in recent memory, as seen in full force at the rear profile while its face pays vertical and horizontal homage to Rolls-Royce’s 103EX Concept car. From the back the car has mid-century roadster vibes.
Design work is currently 95% complete. The project will move out of its design phase and into rigorous validation testing soon. Its final specification will be confirmed in 2027. Deliveries of the Project Nightengale cars begin in 2028. Pricing for the model was not revealed by the company.