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Rolls-Royce looks to the heavens with diamond-encrusted Celestial Phantom

The Middle East is a vital market for Rolls-Royce, particularly in the Gulf emirates. So the British automaker wouldn't let the region's premier auto show go by unnoticed, and to that end has rolled into the Dubai Motor Show with an array of special editions.
Chief among them is the Celestial edition Phantom, a customized limousine that initially debuted at the Frankfurt Motor Show but has returned to Dubai with the addition of 446 diamonds hand-set into the door panels, center console and cabin privacy partition. Taking the spirit of the Phantom's trademark starlight headliner even further, the Celestial edition reproduces overhead the constellations exactly as they were on the evening of January 1, 2003, when Rolls-Royce delivered the first Phantom to its owner, as verified by the South Downs Planetarium in Chichester, England.
The Bespoke division also fitted the Celestial Phantom with inky blue leather, special glassware and a custom picnic set. The wheel hubs are also engraved and the Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament uplit, demonstrating just a few of the possibilities awaiting those with the means not only to buy a new Rolls-Royce, but also commission special features from the Bespoke department.

Rolls-Royce unveils new bespoke Phantom 'Iridescent Opulence'

The Rolls-Royce Phantom is already a fairly solid symbol of conspicuous consumption, but its Bespoke program churns out cars that push the envelope even further. The latest, a feather-and-fleck adorned model dubbed "Iridescent Opulence," certainly checks those boxes.  While Bespoke creations generate buzz with regularity, Rolls-Royce called this one out in particular because it shows off what its designers can do with otherwise "empty" space in the cabin. In this case, the party piece is on the dash, but that's not what the British super-luxe company is calling it. Here it is, straight from Rolls: THE GALLERY   An understanding that the marque’s patrons are increasingly collectors of fine and contemporary art led the Rolls-Royce Design Team to create a space in which to curate and to commission, to exhibit, admire and reflect. A space aptly named ‘The GalleryÂ’, is an application of glass that runs uninterrupted across the fascia of Rolls-Royce Phantom, providing an unprecedented opportunity to present artwork within your car. Assembled in a highly technical Clean Room at the Home of Rolls-Royce in Goodwood, England – a sterile environment within which delicate and highly Bespoke items can be assembled, from a simple application of wood or metal, to a more complex use of materials not normally viable in an automotive context –  ‘The GalleryÂ’ extends the patronÂ’s experience of curation with the marque to a new realm. See? It's not a dashboard; it's an exhibition space. Here, it's used to show off a collection of more than three thousand tail feathers. Yep, feathers. Sustainably sourced, Rolls-Royce insists, but still pretty, and draped over a 3D-printed shape designed to emulate the musculature of a bird wing, so you can pretend those peacocks (we're spitballing here) were absorbed by the machine, rather than slaughtered so their fluffy bits could adorn it.  Feathers and additively manufactured materials are only the tip of the iceberg for these new gallery concepts, Rolls-Royce says, so we expect to see more like this in the future. Just, you know, one at a time. Rolls-Royce Phantom 'Iridescent Opulence' View 13 Photos

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.