Inside a Century of Rolls Royce Phantom: Riviera Roads, Secret Studios, and an Electric Vision

Phantom is not just a model line; it is a century-long conversation between craft, comfort, and the people who expect both. From the first long test drives between England and the French Riviera to today’s Bespoke commissions on six continents, each Phantom has been shaped around an owner’s tastes and the roads, climates, and cultures it calls home. That is why the experience still feels effortless: quiet strength when you need it, and calm confidence the rest of the time.

The story carries a personal thread through Sir Henry Royce. Winters in the South of France gave him endless roads and perfect light to refine an idea: immense power that never shouts. From his Villa Mimosa base, the early Phantom prototypes were tuned over sweeping corniches until they felt like a yacht gliding at speed. The Riviera left fingerprints that remain in modern cars, from Canadel wood to Duality Twill inspired by nearby bamboo groves. Summers pulled Royce back to West Wittering on the Sussex coast, where he set up a studio to approve every component by hand. Cars made the 400 plus mile round trip from Derby for his sign-off, proof that perfection was not a department—it was a habit. He even brought that care to his watercolors, studies that still nudge designers to slow down and look closer.

London is the spiritual anchor. The early showroom on Conduit Street placed Rolls-Royce in the heart of Mayfair, where demonstration drives and conversations with clients shaped expectations of what true comfort should feel like. When the marque prepared its modern rebirth, a secret studio near Hyde Park became the launchpad. The brief was bold: start from a blank page but keep the essentials—the Pantheon grille, very large wheels, and the Spirit of Ecstasy. Designers studied an early 1930s Phantom II and drew the now-signature waft line that rises toward the front, a visual promise that the car is moving even when it is standing still.

The modern era began with a statement of intent. At 00:01 on January 1, 2003, the first Goodwood Phantom met its owner in Australia and immediately crossed roughly 4,500 miles from Perth across the continent. It returned to Goodwood in August 2025 for inspection during Phantom’s centenary year, closing a circle with quiet pride. Along the way, the brand also looked ahead. In 2011, the 102EX experimental electric Phantom tested how battery power could serve silence, smoothness, and control rather than chase specs for their own sake. It was not built for sale, but it proved a principle: technology should elevate the experience you feel from the driver’s seat and the rear cabin alike.

A hundred years on, Phantom still attracts people who set the pace in art, music, leadership, and enterprise. It has been a studio, a stage, a state room, and a gallery—sometimes all in the same day. The next chapter will gather these threads into a landmark Bespoke car that honors the founders, celebrates the journeys already taken, and leaves room for the ones still to come.