Rolls-Royce Motor Cars PressClub · Article.
LANDMARK INVESTMENT CROWNS RECORD YEAR FOR BESPOKE AT ROLLS-ROYCE MOTOR CARS
Wed Jan 08 01:00:00 CET 2025 Press Release
Rolls-Royce has announced an investment exceeding £300m to extend its manufacturing facility at Goodwood. This is the next step in the company’s commitment to creating value for clients by handcrafting the most complex, personal, and valuable luxury goods while providing an unparalleled client experience. The marque’s 2024 performance (a record year for Bespoke and the third-best sales result in the company’s history) confirms the success of this approach.
Press Contact.
Marius Tegneby
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
Tel: +447815 246106
send an e-mail
Author.
Marius Tegneby
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
Downloads.
This article in other PressClubs
- More than £300 million investment committed to Home of Rolls-Royce at Goodwood
- Site extension to expand Bespoke and Coachbuild capabilities
- 10% increase in Bespoke content value per motor car year-on-year; a record result
- Invite-only Private Office network expands to five with addition of two new locations
- 5,712 motor cars delivered in 2024: Third-highest annual sales figure on record
- Global sales present a balanced picture, led by North America and Europe
- Introduction of a record four new models in 2024: Cullinan Series II and Ghost Series II, together with the respective Black Badge models.
“In 2024, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars reaffirmed its position as an
authentic luxury house by crafting the most complex, personal, and
valuable motor cars in its history. This momentum means it is
necessary for us to invest more than £300 million in extending the
Home of Rolls-Royce. This represents our most substantial financial
commitment to Goodwood since its opening in 2003 and a significant
vote of confidence in the Rolls-Royce marque, securing our future
here in the UK. 2024’s record Bespoke results demonstrate our
clients are increasingly drawn to the marque to create ever more
ambitious and valuable motor cars, thereby enjoying the exceptional
and highly personalised experience that Rolls-Royce ownership
unlocks. This underscores our commitment to creating value for our
clients and those with a stake in our business.”
Chris Brownridge, Chief Executive, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has announced an investment
exceeding £300 million to extend its manufacturing facility at
Goodwood. This is the next step in the company’s commitment to
creating value for clients by handcrafting the most complex, personal,
and valuable luxury goods while providing an unparalleled client
experience. The marque’s 2024 performance – a record year for Bespoke
and the third-best sales result in the company’s history – confirms
the success of this approach.
The extension will create additional space for the increasingly
complex and high-value Bespoke and Coachbuild projects sought by
clients who define luxury as something deeply personal to them. It
will also ready the manufacturing facility for the marque’s transition
to an all-battery electric vehicle (BEV) future.
This £300+ million investment is the single largest injection of
capital since the plant opened on 1 January 2003. Then, it employed
around 300 people and produced just one motor car a day. Although the
Goodwood manufacturing plant has undergone significant internal
changes over the past 20 years, the building itself has remained
largely unchanged, while staff numbers have since increased more than
eightfold, and the marque now produces up to 28 motor cars a day.
More than 2,500 individuals are now employed at the Home of
Rolls-Royce at Goodwood – including many highly skilled manufacturing
and craft specialists – as well as around 7,500 people in the
company’s wider UK supply chain. In 2023, an independent study by the
London School of Economics (LSE) demonstrated that Rolls-Royce Motor
Cars contributes around half a billion pounds to the UK economy every
year, as a leading representative of ‘UK PLC’.
Planning permission to extend the Home of Rolls-Royce was
granted in 2024. Fittingly, this milestone was achieved during the
year in which Rolls-Royce celebrated the 120th anniversary of the
first meeting between its co-founders, The Hon. Charles Stewart Rolls
and Henry (later Sir Henry) Royce, on 4 May 1904. Site preparation and
landscaping work is now underway.
A RECORD YEAR FOR BESPOKE
During 2024, the Rolls-Royce Bespoke Collective of
specialist designers, engineers, and craftspeople undertook some of
their most creatively daring and technically challenging commissions
to date. These projects incorporated innovative materials, features,
and craft techniques never seen before on a Rolls-Royce motor car,
resulting in unique, emotionally resonant masterpieces which truly
reflect each commissioning client’s interests and personality.
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ Bespoke offering reached record levels
in 2024. Bespoke content value increased 10% on average per motor car
year-on-year, reaching the highest level in the company’s history.
This record achievement is a testament to Rolls-Royce’s
long-term strategic focus on Bespoke, centred on creating value for
clients through highly individualised products and experiences, and
providing opportunities for meaningful personal expression. These commissions drew inspiration from
diverse themes, ranging from spectacular natural phenomena and the
marque’s heritage to cherished personal milestones and classic
films. Artisans crafted exquisite details including solid
18-carat gold sculptures, intricate embroideries comprising more than
869,500 stitches, delicate marquetry composed of more than 500
individually shaped pieces of wood, captivating mother-of-pearl
artworks, and holographic paint finishes, among other notable
expressions of contemporary craft.
Rolls-Royce Phantom Extended received the most comprehensive
Bespoke commissions throughout the year, as clients explored this
generous and detailed canvas for personal expression. In its first
full year of deliveries, clients immediately saw the Bespoke potential
of Spectre, with this model containing the second highest level of
Bespoke content per motor car in the marque’s 2024 portfolio.
The Middle East was the largest Bespoke region by average value
per motor car, closely followed by North America and Europe.
Rolls-Royce Coachbuild, the pinnacle of Bespoke expression,
unveiled Arcadia Droptail in 2024. It is one of four coachbuilt
Droptail masterpieces, which followed the marque’s previous Coachbuild
commissions ‘Sweptail’ and Boat Tail.
AN UNMATCHED CLIENT EXPERIENCE
The marque’s commitment to Bespoke is reflected in
its Private Offices, which take the highly personalised experience of
commissioning a Rolls-Royce at Goodwood directly to clients around the
world. In 2024, this global network of VIP spaces was expanded to New
York and Seoul, which joined their counterparts in Dubai and Shanghai.
Inspired by the original Private Office in Goodwood, these creative
hubs are available by invitation, each designed to inspire creativity
and close collaboration between clients and a dedicated designer and
client experience manager based in the region. This unique experience
is highly appreciated by clients, with Private Office commissions
typically being 25% higher in value due to the opportunity to explore
the full extent of Rolls-Royce’s Bespoke capabilities.
Rolls-Royce’s dealer partners around the world also continued to
invest in the marque’s updated visual identity and showroom concept,
which provides a social, creatively engaging environment in which
clients can relax and find inspiration for their Bespoke commission.
The Rolls-Royce invitation-only members’ app, Whispers,
continued to grow in 2024, with a 55% uplift in membership. In this
exclusive digital members’ club, clients can network with each other
and gain access to exclusive Rolls-Royce insights about the marque and
the wider luxury world. Whispers also enables direct client contact
with senior Rolls-Royce Motor Cars executives and those who own a
Goodwood-era Rolls-Royce, fostering a particularly close bond between
the marque and its clients.
GLOBALLY BALANCED SALES PICTURE
Rolls-Royce introduced a record four new models in
2024: Cullinan Series II and Ghost Series II, together
with the respective Black Badge models. These highly successful
launches, together with sustained demand for all Rolls-Royce products,
contributed to global sales of 5,712 in 2024 – the third-highest
annual total ever achieved and in line with the marque’s forecasts and
expectations, given the changeover to the new models.
2024 was also the first full year of sales for Rolls-Royce
Spectre, which proved even more popular than expected. Spectre was the
most requested Rolls-Royce model in Europe last year and the second
most demanded globally, with clients around the world confirming it
amplifies the attributes for which the marque is most renowned:
silence, ‘waftability’ and the unique ‘magic-carpet ride’ experience.
Taking all regions into consideration, the most requested
Rolls-Royce models in 2024 were Cullinan, Spectre, then Ghost.
Phantom, the marque’s flagship, retained its status as the ultimate
and rarest Rolls-Royce. Phantom will celebrate its centenary in 2025.
In 2024, North America was Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ largest sales
region, measured by the number of motor cars handed over to clients.
Several regions, including the Middle East & Africa, Europe, and
Asia Pacific, achieved record sales. In China, the marque responded to
sustained demand for Bespoke from its dealer partners, reflecting a
continuous increase in younger clientele engaging with Rolls-Royce
Motor Cars and its unique and highly personalised experience. This is
most clearly evidenced at the Private Office in Shanghai, which opened
in 2023, demonstrating the marque’s ongoing commitment to the region.
In 2024, Rolls-Royce also benefited from smaller but
fast-growing markets, including Malaysia, Thailand, and the
Netherlands. The UAE, Germany and Japan, all large and
well-established markets for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, were among a
number of countries which achieved record sales in 2024. They also
experienced a significant uplift in demand for Bespoke features, with
some of the most ambitious Bespoke commissions originating from these markets.
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars looks forward with confidence to 2025,
when the marque will be unveiling its next electric motor car.