The BMW-hosted Concours d'Elegance held in Italy at Villa d'Este is usually a big-time event; however, it seems that this year was relatively quiet. Really, the only news came from Rolls-Royce and BMW.
That's it.
Rolls-Royce Sweptail
Maybe it had something to do with Jim Glickenhaus too busy fielding a team racing around the Nürburgring, or a year without any Zagatos. Long story short, the Roller announcement was a blockbuster. That's because it does two things:
1) It's the signal of a new era for Rolls-Royce as the company says it may begin exploring doing more one-off project cars, like the Sweptail; and,
2) The Sweptail now is thought to be the most expensive new vehicle produced. While there hasn't been an official dollar amount tagged to the project, the rumors swirling around Lake Como seem to indicate $12.8 million for the four-year project car.
See the excerpt from CAR's sit down interview with Roller's head honcho and the detailed video clip that takes you through what may be the world's most expensive new vehicle to ever be sold.
Rolls-Royce Sweptail
Excerpts from CAR's sit down with Rolls-Royce's CEO follows:
...The Sweptail has been hailed as Rolls-Royce's return to creating bespoke cars, but creating them can be difficult on a platform that already exists.
Torsten hints at Rolls-Royce making future platforms more accessible for unique coachbuilding to be performed on them; ‘In theory [we can] because our decision is to go aluminium spaceframe architecture only, and that is the kind of technology that allows, in principle, doing stuff like that.’ He was however, keen to stress that this would need further investigation before allowing any future customers to get too excited about ordering their own unique car...
...So how much is the Sweptail? Torsten neglected to give even a ballpark figure, but did say ‘it was substantially expensive. Substantially expensive. You can easily say that this is probably the most expensive new car in ages… ever...'
Pretty unique Rolls Royce One-Off at the Villa D'Este Concorso. Rumored to cost nearly 12.8 million dollars and four years of design and planning to build. This is an official Rolls Royce car and not built by a coachbuilder or third party.
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