Rolls-Royce is going to unveil its latest Bespoke Collection car at two 'highly fitting' locations this month. Because the latest model in this ultimate series is the Phantom Drophead Coupé Waterspeed Collection, which harks back to Sir Malcolm Campbell and his record-breaking aquatic feats.
The new model gets its first showing this week at an exclusive preview event for press and customers on the site of the original Bluebird Motor Company (BMC) - now the Bluebird Restaurant - on the King's Road in London. BMC was a business that would fund Sir Malcolm Campbell's battle to wrest the water speed record from its American holders, thus providing the link to the Collection car's name.
It will then move on to the Concorso D'Eleganza at Villa D'Este on the shores of Italy's Lake Como for its first public unveiling. And the relevance here? Well, aside from the whole elegance theme, Campbell set his world record of 126.33mph (just over 203km/h) on adjacent Lake Maggiore on September 1, 1937 - in the Bluebird K3, powered by a Rolls-Royce R engine.
Exterior
The exterior is Maggiore Blue, which connects both to the lake the record was set on and the Bluebird's colour scheme. There are nine layers of paint, which are then hand-sanded and finished with a powdered lacquer. Not only that, the colour even extends to the cylinder heads of the engine and the polished 11-spoke alloys. There's a hand-painted coachline with a Bluebird motif that takes four hours to apply by RR's master... er, coachline painter. And the Drophead's teak decking rear has been replaced with individually, hand panel-beaten steel that takes 70 hours of shaping, before an RR craftsperson hand-brushes the metal for more than ten hours. This is very exacting stuff.
Interior
The exterior hue is echoed within by accents on the dashboard and the two-tone steering wheel with Maggiore Blue details. The leather is named Windchill Grey, there are armrest tunnel caps with a new interpretation of the famous Bluebird motif in the doors (the armrests alone take eight hours to complete), Abachi wood - a timber made of a West African tropical tree, that has been utilised by Fender Japan to make limited edition guitars - debuts in a Rolls in the Waterspeed, and it is bookmatched (look it up) so that it looks like the wake left by a boat at speed.
Further reference to Campbell's craft is made via a new version of the famous 'power reserve' dial. The more you demand of the Phantom Drophead's V12, the more the dial moves back towards a yellow and blue zone - Campbell's K3 was said to be 'going into the blue' at maximum engine revs. There's also a bespoke front-lit clock featuring the Bluebird's infinity symbol and dials hewn from aluminium billet. Inside the glovebox is a hand-embroidered panel with the records Campbell set both at Maggiore and later on Coniston Water.
Anything else?
"This very special motor car serves to pay a perfect homage to my grandfather's remarkable acts of British daring and endeavour," said Donald Wales, grandson of Sir Malcolm Campbell. "The extraordinary attention-to-detail and commitment to engineering excellence so evident in these motor cars perfectly echoes the lengths my grandfather and his colleagues went to in their pursuit of the water speed records."