Rolls-Royce Bets Big on Customized Cars

Owning a Rolls-Royce really isn’t good enough. You’re nobody until you have a unique Rolls-Royce.

The 118-year-old British luxury car icon announced on Wednesday that it’s planning to invest over £300 million ($370 million) in expanding its factory and headquarters specifically so it can manufacture more bespoke vehicles for its crème de la crème clientele. It’s a strategy that fellow luxury carmaker Bentley has also pursued, and by pushing for the very top 1% of clients, the companies might be able to counter the depression that the luxury consumer market has been grappling with.

They See Me Rolls-Roycin’

Per the BBC, Rolls-Royce’s sales volume for 2024 fell 5% from the previous year to 5,712 vehicles. For many companies, a decline like that would be a troubling development (just ask Tesla) but in Rolls-Royce’s case, the profit margins on those sales went up because more buyers opted for expensive customizations. 

Rolls-Royce said the price of customizing vehicles rose 10% in 2024 compared with the year before, per The Guardian, and that the price of bespoke cars is usually 25% higher than regular, off-the-rack Rolls-Royces. To be fair, some of the customizations listed do sound a bit pricey:

• One customer ordered a car with a solid gold bonnet sculpture (gotta be careful not to ding that), and another had an LED light display installed that could project the stars from a specific date onto the car’s ceiling. The date in question? Their dog’s birthday. Paging screenwriters for next season’s White Lotus.
• Last year, Bentley said roughly 70% of customers were opting for customizations that cost more than $43,000. Given Rolls-Royce’s cheapest model, the Ghost, clocks in at £280,000 ($346,000) and the company’s saying customizations bump the price up by a quarter, its price tag for extra bits and bobs sits somewhere closer to $87,000.

Carpool: For Rolls-Royce, expensive add-ons are the future. For more mass-market carmakers, the future holds a lot of carbon accounting. Faced with new EU rules on emissions this year, major car brands including Stellantis, Toyota, and Ford are pooling with firms that sell more EVs — e.g., Tesla and Polestar — and buying carbon credits off them to avoid millions or possibly even billions of euros in fines.