The Drop Tail’s front end design, meanwhile, is more familiar, although whereas the grille’s bars are typically straight and upright, they are curved on the Drop Tail and end at chamfered – rather than right-angled – corners. These adjustments reflect the car’s “informal spirit”, according to Rolls-Royce.
That ‘informal’ approach continues inside, where the brief was to create an “intimate” environment. Switchgear is obscured where possible. Only three buttons are left in open view, and the powered centre console can be moved to cover the infotainment control dial.
A vast wooden panel cocoons the seats, intended to reinforce the “romantic” atmosphere. It was built by a single craftsman – a former Rolls-Royce apprentice – who is said to have worked on the panel over nine months, in silence, for no more than one hour per day, to ensure complete focus on the task. This was the “most complicated, involved and prohibitive work of craft ever produced” at its Goodwood factory, said Coachbuild design boss Alex Innes.
The first Drop Tail, dubbed ‘La Rose Noire’, comes with a bespoke Audemars Piguet watch which also functions as the car’s clock, mounted to the dashboard using a clasp mechanism. This posed a significant challenge, said Innes: “That had to be crash tested, both physically and in virtual simulations, to ensure that the timepiece would remain in situ were the car to experience any sort of abstract movements in a crash situation. [We went to] lengths that nobody would normally go to, were they not instigated by the specific wishes of a commissioning client.”
