Rolls-Royce Arcadia Droptail's Gorgeous Wood Trim Took 8,000 Hours To Create

Following the La Rose Noire and Amethyst cars that were shown last summer, Rolls-Royce just unveiled its third of four coachbuilt Droptail models. The new Droptail is called Arcadia, named after the “heaven on earth” realm from Ancient Greek mythology, and while its exterior design is more subtle than the other Droptails, its interior has some jaw-dropping touches.

The Arcadia Droptail was commissioned by a client in Singapore who is a fan of architecture and design, and wanted their car to showcase “purity and subtle restraint, reflecting their firm belief in distilling complexity to reveal the inherent, fundamental essence.” To that end, it’s finished in a seemingly solid white paint that shimmers when hit by light thanks to aluminum and glass particles under the clearcoat, which Rolls-Royce says “creates the illusion of unending depth” in the paint. It’s accented by a custom dark metallic silver paint on the hood that’s also used for the lower bodywork; on the other two Droptails, the sills, front splitter and diffuser are finished in exposed carbon fiber. The 22-inch wheels, grille surround and other trim pieces all have a mirror-polished finish.

On the inside the Arcadia Droptail uses bespoke white and tan leather, both of which were created for and named after the customer. It’s a stunning combination, and though I still wish the Droptail’s dashboard was more distinct than other “regular” Rolls-Royces, the distinct center console and door panels make up for it. While cars in Singapore are mostly right-hand drive, the customer chose to go with a left-hand-drive configuration as the Arcadia will regularly be driven around the world.

As with every other Rolls-Royce the Arcadia Droptail has a clock set into the dashboard, but this one is the most complex clock face that Rolls ever created — the company says it took more than two years to develop, and the assembly alone took five months. In celebration of the brand’s 119-year anniversary last year (which is when the client first saw the car), the clock has a raw metal face with a guilloché pattern made up of 119 facets. The hands are partly brushed and partly polished, and the chaplets, or hour markers, are just 0.1 mm thick and were painted by hand using a camera that can magnify by up to 100x.

Don’t think this clock is just like any other fancy watch, either — Rolls-Royce says its testing and validation standards are higher than those of traditional watchmakers. Typically the minute marker of a watch is anodized, but the Arcadia’s is finished in a ceramic coating that both looks better and is more durable, with parts of the coating getting laser-etched to expose the aluminum’s mirror finish. Every piece of the clock was individually machined from stainless-steel billet and polished by hand, and the gauges have the same guilloché pattern.

But the real showpiece on the Arcadia Droptail is its wood trim, which covers the entire rear deck and is found on the dashboard, center console, and “shawl panel” that cocoons the seats and wraps onto the doors. After much deliberation, the client and team decided on Santos Straight Grain, a high-density hardwood that the company says has one of the finest grain types of any wood it uses. It was chosen because of the interlocking grain pattern, but it also proved to be a major challenge as this kind of wood can easily tear when machined and crack when dried.

233 pieces of wood were used in total, 76 of which were just for the rear deck, and the grain had to be laid at a 55-degree angle throughout. Rolls’ designers used CAD to place each piece of wood, and while the curved shawl panel appears to be made from two mirrored pieces, it’s actually made of 40 different sections of wood. In order to apply the wood onto such complex curved surfaces, Rolls-Royce had to develop new substructures for the center armrest, dash and doors to ensure the wood’s stability and rigidity, taking inspiration from carbon-fiber layering techniques used by Formula 1 cars.

Because the Arcadia will be driven in different climates all around the world, including some that are tropical, using the right protective coating for the exposed wood was important. Coatings used on superyachts were considered but ultimately rejected as they have to be regularly reapplied, so Rolls-Royce developed its own special lacquer that only had to be applied once for the lifetime of the car. Sample pieces were subjected to rigorous testing that simulates different weather extremes, with pieces getting sprayed with water, left to dry in darkness and then exposed by heat and bright light — this was repeated on 18 different samples for 1,000 hours until the engineers were happy with the result. All in, the wood trim took more than 8,000 hours to develop and complete.

Rolls-Royce’s Coachbuild division spent more than four years on the Arcadia, including “many months examining and interrogating the client’s tastes in everything from clothes and furnishings to food and travel destinations.” The owner’s daughter and other family members also got involved, and apparently once the car was finished, everyone agreed that it “perfectly captures [his] aesthetic and character.” With a pricetag of around $30 million, I’d certainly hope so.