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Rolls-Royce to auction one-off 115th birthday Phantom

Rolls-Royce and RM Sotheby's has announced a partnership amidst an expected luxurious environment, with a five-course dinner at Sotheby's redesigned 90,000-plus-square-foot New York City headquarters. As part of Rolls-Royce's 115th birthday celebration (the official date was May 4), the two announced a one-off, bespoke 2020 Rolls-Royce Phantom will be auctioned off this fall exclusively on Sotheby's online auction service. The lead image shows an early-stage sketch of what the special-edition Phantom could look like. There are extremely limited details about the car, but Rolls-Royce confirmed it will be red. It will also include "an original hand-crafted leather work of art" as part of the interior. We expect this to be in the same vein as the dashboard inlays and hand-stitching we've seen in past bespoke Rolls-Royces. Because the one-off car will be honoring a birthday, we wouldn't be surprised if it featured several indicators that mark the occasion. Think numbered door sills, treadplates, dashboard or console plaques, and possibly special-edition badges. This, of course, is speculation, but these are often features on these types of vehicles. The base price of a Rolls-Royce Phantom is approximately $450,000, and when we first tested the uber-luxe personal limo, it reached as high as about $650,000. And that was just a "regular" Phantom. As a guaranteed collector's item, a set price for this vehicle would likely cost significantly more. But its price is not set, as it will be sold through RM Sotheby's online auction. It seems likely that this thing could easily tick right past $1 million. Rolls-Royce said the car will be auctioned in the fall but gave no specific dates. We'll provide updates as soon as we get 'em. Related Video:

Rolls-Royce Wraith convertible spied sliding in the snow

Rolls-Royce may be on the verge of producing its first crossover, but it's a different prototype we're looking at here, frolicking in the snow. It's the convertible version of the Wraith, which Rolls-Royce is preparing to join the existing fastback coupe and the Ghost sedan in its "entry-level" lineup. Only we don't expect it to be called the Wraith Drophead Coupe like its larger counterpart, the Phantom DHC, but to go with an entirely different name (just as the aforementioned fastback took to distinguish itself from the sedan). Expect Goodwood to pull another suitably poltergeist-related nameplate from its archives (or from the netherworld) to slap on its new drop-top. Otherwise, we can expect the Wraith convertible (or whatever it's ultimately called) to closely mirror its fixed-roof counterpart, complete with suicide doors and a 6.6-liter twin-turbo V12, when it arrives sometime in the middle of next year. Related Video:

Rolls-Royce planning one or two new models based on the Ghost

Fourteen years after Volkswagen bought Bentley, its English brand has two distinct lines, Mulsanne and Continental - with numerous variants at the Continental's lower price point - an SUV on the way and perhaps a sports car and a Mulsanne convertible, too. In the 14 years since BMW bought Rolls-Royce, its English brand has the Phantom and Ghost - with three variants at the Phantom's much higher price point. Rolls-Royce doesn't chase sales, but the difference in the brand direction helps explain why Bentley has sold more cars in the first six months of this year than Rolls-Royce sold all of last year.
And even though Rolls-Royce isn't solely about the tally, it would still like to improve on the 3,538 cars it sold last year - a sales record that eclipsed a mark set in 1978. To do so its CEO is planning one or two more Ghost-based models beyond the as-yet-unnamed Ghost Coupe due next year, perhaps to be called the Corniche, according to a report in Autocar. A convertible version of the Ghost Coupe is the obvious guess for one of them, and it would get the double-R "closer to 4,000" sales, where the CEO would like to be.
Sales might not be the only part of it, though; the headline of the Autocar piece says the CEO wants the new models because they're "required to give Rolls-Royce a proper identity." If that is accurate, we have no idea what kind of identity Rolls-Royce could be missing that would be served by a wider range of cars in the Ghost range, which by their place in the brand's own lineup are admittedly not the most opulent carriages on the planet.