There is hardly a more civilized way to go on a day trip than to the Concorso D’Eleganza on the shores of Lake Como.
The setting in the rooms and on the grounds of the Hotel Villa D’Este is so ridiculously picturesque and atmospheric that it can feel more like a movie set. Though James Bond’s location scouts would probably turn it down because it’s a bit much.
Speedboat charters come and go bringing glamorous guests from hotels around the lake. Helicopters and seaplanes circling overhead intermittently. Women in phenomenally expensive sunglasses and men in well thought-out shoe and sock combinations sip champagne while artfully strolling from one remarkable classic car to the next.
Rolls Royce
To put it simply, the Concorso is a motor show that first took place here in 1929 and has been revitalized and redesigned since the late 1990s.
In the US there is the big and boisterous Pebble Beach. Great Britain has the very sociable Hampton Court. But that is, well, Villa D’este.
This year in October instead of the usual May after an obligatory Covid Gap year, 47 selected cars made it into the final entry list. From eye-catching oldies like the Lancia Astura from 1934
Torpedo, up to the ‘Best in Show’ 1956 Ferrari 250GT, up to a whole category of
Supercars from the nineties, including the Ferrari F40 and the McLaren F1.
The burden is usually on beautifully preserved and restored 20th century cars, but there is a small donation each year for a suitable new car or two that have been given to a rather notable Rolls-Royce this year.
Rolls Royce
In fact, Rolls-Royce CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös called the “greatest Rolls Royce of all time” during the unveiling of the boat stern at the weekend, during which gigantic loudspeakers in the villa’s mosaic garden played music from gigantic loudspeakers to a lot of camera phones. built “. Quite an award.
And “built” is a fitting word, because the Rolls-Royce Boat Tail was completely hand-assembled, the product of the brand’s bodywork division, which works with customers to create essentially bespoke cars to their very own specifications. This is where the first Rolls-Royce built as a touring coach, the Sweptail, was presented four years ago.
The unnamed customer named here wanted a modern take on the Rolls-Royce Boat Tails of the 1920s. Already a prolific Rolls-Royces buyer, he also wanted a car that would celebrate a lifetime’s work; Work that had clearly proven fruitful.
This was the basic assignment discussed with Alex Innes, Head of Body Shop at RR. So we started a joint project that should last four years. If you want to get an idea of the work behind it, you should keep in mind that hardly a single panel or component is shared with Rolls’ existing range of models.
The beautiful two-tone blue paint job was first inspired by a pair of the client’s loafers, while the back is really eye-catching, curved and ready to resemble the deck of a yacht and houses a champagne and picnic set that proudly unfolds and stands for attention when needed.
The instructions were clear that the refrigerator had to be powerful enough to hold two bottles of champagne over a short distance. A request that sounds both completely ridiculous and perfectly reasonable. With all this effort, warm champagne wouldn’t really match the general mood.
Hosting suite with champagne fridge
Rolls Royce
The initials ‘HN’ on each exterior mirror do not denote the owner’s name, but the words ‘High Noon’; a sympathetic feeling that the day and everything that it could bring remains ahead of us and unknown. Let’s just hope, for their sake, that this isn’t about the Hammersmith top.
The cabin is designed to make you want to sit and stare for a day or two. Here, the customer’s obsession with watch collecting led Swiss watchmaker Bovet to create his and her timepieces with bespoke complications that can be placed and removed from the dashboard depending on the driver. A task that Bovet CEO Pascal Raffy counts as one of the most demanding he has been given.
Rolls-Royce, unveiled the same week, announced its first all-electric model – named “Specter” a little oddly when No Time To Die hit theaters – the Goodwood brand, owned by BMW since 1998, is at the same time future-proof core business on the one hand, while on the other hand they double what they see as a growth niche of hyper-personalization for their wealthiest customers.
When the Concours is about celebrating extraordinary cars in an extraordinary location, the Boat Tail was a perfect headliner. Rolls-Royce’s Global Communications Director Richard Carter suggests that it will be back on the lawn of the Concours as a historic classic in the years to come, and who could argue with that.
Let’s hope that the Concorso D’Eleganza in the Villa D’Este has remained similarly unchanged even then.
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