These Rolls-Royce ‘Year of the Dragon’ Special Editions Are Ready for CNY

In conjunction with the upcoming Lunar New Year, Rolls-Royce has unveiled new ‘Year of the Dragon’ special commissions, featuring four models.

In celebration of the upcoming Lunar New Year, boutique British marque Rolls-Royce has unveiled exclusive special edition models. Known as the ‘Year of the Dragon’ special commissions, this new collection features four bespoke models, comprising three Phantom Extended saloons and one Cullinan SUV.

As its name suggests, these four bespoke models feature tons of dragon-themed design. For starters, each of the four models comes draped in a special two-tone colourway including a grey/red combo for one of the Phantoms and red/grey ones for the sole Cullinan model. Said paint jobs are complemented by hand-painted coachline trims with a dragon motif.

Not only were they hand-painted, Rolls-Royce also ensured that each of the dragon motifs faces to the right in order to “symbolically represent the east—the direction of the rising sun.”

Each of these special models comes with unique, hand-painted dragon motif on the front dash

More dragon-themed motifs can be seen as we get inside these special models, with three of them featuring a special front dash panel with hand-painted dragon motifs painted on them. Appropriately, each of these dragon motifs is painted in red, which of course represents good fortune and prosperity in Chinese culture.

While the motif may look simple at first glance, Rolls-Royce said that each of these hand-drawn motifs took over two weeks to complete, as each of them requires artists to use multiple layers of different red-hued paints to give the unique 3D look.

Besides the front dash panel, the same dragon motif can also be found on the headrests

Similarly, the red dragon embossing on each of the headrests is also a very strenuous application, with each of them taking around 20 hours to complete and requiring over 5,000 stitches.

By far the highlight of the cabin is the stunning dragon-themed starlight headliner

While these two dragon motifs seem quite impressive, they are pale in comparison to the real highlight of these special models’ cabin, which is the dragon-shaped starlight headliner. It features precisely 677 individually placed fibre optic red ‘stars’ that form an abstract of a dragon motif while being surrounded by 667 lights scattered around them.

It took Rolls-Royce more than three months to design and develop this unique take on its signature starlight headliner, with its installation taking over 20 hours to complete.

Apart from these dragon-themed design elements, each of these bespoke models is fully loaded with other premium materials, including lambswool carpets, unique carbon fibre trims on some models, and many more.

All four of these ‘Year of the Dragon’ special commissions are available for order from the start of the Lunar New Year onward, which is set to take place later on February 10. While these bespoke models feature Chinese-inspired designs, RR insisted that they won’t be limited to the Chinese market only.

As expected, RR did not mention the price tags for any of these four special models. But given the special details and all the timely procedures taken by RR artists to create them, we can expect each of these models to fetch higher than their standard models’ usual prices, which are already in the millions to begin with.