Rolls-Royce has marked the Phantom's centenary with the Centenary Private Collection, limited to 25 cars. The company describes it as the most complex and technologically ambitious Private Collection it has produced. Development took three years and more than 40,000 working hours.
The car uses the Phantom VIII as its base, but most of the changes concern materials and craftsmanship. The rear seats use high-resolution printed designs and more than 160,000 embroidery stitches. The wood panels introduce three Rolls-Royce firsts: three-dimensional marquetry, 3D ink layering and the use of 24-carat gold leaf.
Outside, the Spirit of Ecstasy is cast in solid gold and based on the 1925 figurine. The RR badges use 24-carat gold and white enamel for the first time. Special disc wheels carry 25 engraved lines each, making 100 lines across the four wheels as a reference to the model's century.
The Centenary Private Collection does not add performance or create a separate mechanical derivative of the Phantom. Its significance lies in the scale of factory craft and decoration: Rolls-Royce has treated the existing limousine as a physical archive of the model's first hundred years rather than simply another colour-and-trim specification.