- 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. That should make it clear what we are dealing with here.
- Starting with a Phantom Extended as the base, the Syntopia has a custom scent – yes, its own special smell – and a one-off paint color.
- The Syntopia has already been talked about and will make its way to someone’s vehicle collection in May.
If you have to ask, you can’t afford it. Actually, 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 one-off Rolls-Royce Phantom called the Syntopia. Iris van Herpen, whose most recent fashion collection had models drop into the water to show off the clothes, has teamed up with Rolls-Royce to create a Phantom Extended, inspired by the concept of “weaving water,” van Herpen said. Rolls-Royce calls the car a “custom masterpiece,” and it’s clearly complicated. We believe the company’s statement that the project, from conception to completion, took four years.
Designer Iris Van Herpen with the Syntopia.
You are of course free to see it less as a work of art and more as an exercise in exploring fanciful “fancy” ideas using someone else’s money. While this may apply to many Rolls-Royce vehicles, we don’t think we’re exaggerating, as this is the first Rolls with its custom flavor (developed with input from the customer who ordered the car), and the paint is a one -off color, Liquid Noir. The odor enters the cabin through a patented odor release mechanism in the headrests.
Inspired by haute couture, or the “art of fashion”, in Van Herpen’s words, the Syntopia takes its name from Van Herpen’s 2018 collection. Van Herpen, for her part, said she wants the car to create the feeling in the driver or rider that they are “overwhelmed by the forces of nature”.
The Syntopia’s exterior is a purple, swirling touch that elevates the elegant Phantom’s design. The company said the iridescent paint has blue, magenta and gold undertones. The Liquid Noir color starts with a solid black paint covered with a color-shifting overlay and a transparent outer layer with integrated pigment. The development of this new paint took Rolls several months, requiring more than 3000 hours for testing and validation.
The interior uses pieces and designs made by the Rolls-Royce Bespoke Collective in Goodwood and from Herpen’s team members in Amsterdam. The front seats are covered in Magic Gray leather, and there is a silk blend material on the rear seats. The Weaving Water Starlight Headliner uses one piece of leather molded into a 3D design thanks to woven nylon fabric that resembles a silver “liquid metal” texture. There are also 162 “delicate petals made of glass organza” and nearly 1000 sparkling fiber optic “stars” inside. Rolls said that installing the headliner alone took nearly 700 combined hours of work, including the time the designers took to select this particular sheet of “flawless leather” from over 1,000 hides. Not sure if this is what Van Herpen meant by “being overwhelmed by the forces of nature.”
The Phantom Syntopia will find a home in a client’s private collection in May. Rolls-Royce promised that it would never repeat this vehicle.
Contributing Editor
Sebastian Blanco has been writing about electric vehicles, hybrids and hydrogen cars since 2006. His articles and car reviews appeared in the 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 followed the shift away from petrol-powered vehicles and discovered the new technology’s importance not only to the car industry, but to the world as a whole. . Throw in the recent shift to autonomous vehicles, and there are more interesting changes happening now 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.
