Rolls-Royce La Rose Noire Droptail Unveiled As Ultra-Rare Coachbuilt Roadster

Renowned British boutique marque Rolls-Royce has unveiled its latest coachbuilt special, cordially named as the Rolls-Royce La Rose Noire Droptail. Presented to its owners in a private ceremony during the Monterey Car Week (MCW) last weekend, this coachbuilt roadster is inspired by the Black Baccara rose – a symbol of love, hope and optimism.

Rolls-Royce La Rose Noire Droptail is draped in exquisite 'True Love' hue

The Droptail is draped in this exquisite pearlescent dark red colour known as ‘True Love’. Featuring over five layers of clear lacquer top coat, this new hue is developed in-house by RR’s paint specialist, which took them over 150 attempts to get it right and perfect. The ‘True Love’ deep red hue is mated to a dark finish called ‘Hydroshade’, which is directly plated to the bodywork via a chrome electrolyte instead of being sprayed over.

Thanks to its hardtop setup, the Droptail can double as both a sporty coupe and an open-top roadster

In terms of body styles, the Droptail is a two-door roadster with a removable carbon fibre hardtop, featuring an electrochromic glass that can transition from opaque to translucent on command. When the roof is propped–up, the Droptail stood as a very sporty coupe with slanting roofline – making it almost akin to the Spectre EV coupe, albeit being slightly smaller. Meanwhile, removing its hardtop entirely transforms the Droptail to an open-top roadster.

At the front, the La Rose Noire Droptail comes with a familiar-looking front fascia, featuring Spectre-esque slim LED headlights flanking its sizable front grille with RR’s signature Spirit of Ecstasy ornament crowning above it.

As its name suggests, this special roadster sports a swooping rear end, featuring stylish slim taillights and lower bumper accent with dual massive tailpipes sticking out. Instead of installing a rear wing, the marque has tweaked its rear deck design to still produce ample downforce to the car without compromising on aesthetics – a process that took RR experts over two years  and 20 attempts to nail down perfectly.

On board, the Droptail comes with a matching cabin design, showcasing excellent craftsmanship by RR’s in-house design team. The cabin is laced with hand-made parquetry featuring over 1,603 triangle-shaped black wood veneers with several hand-painted red ones that represent an abstract of falling rose petals.

This Audemars Piguet centrepice is removable and wearable by the owners

Centrepiece to this whole cabin, however, is the custom-made Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept Split-Second Chronograph GMT Large Date watch with matching dark red hue bolted directly on the front dash. As per the clients’ requests, this timepiece is removable from the car, enabling the owners to wear them like any other watches.

Beneath the Droptail’s front hood lies a familiar 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V12 mill that is also used on other RR models like the Dawn. Unlike the gran tourer, the Droptail gets bespoke state-of-tune, granting it with a total system output of 593 HP and 841 NM. While Rolls-Royce has not revealed any performance figures, there’s no doubt that the Droptail will match or even surpass the Dawn’s sub-5-second century time.

The all-new Rolls-Royce La Rose Noire Droptail continues the marque’s long-line of hand-built bespoke models, with only four total units made by RR’s coachbuilding arm. As expected, RR did not reveal the price tag for each one of this special model, but considering a standard Rolls-Royce already fetched hundreds of thousands, we won’t be surprised if the Droptail is tagged within the millions.