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Virgin Galactic just revealed a new supersonic passenger jet planned with Rolls-Royce, which used to make Concorde jet engines (SPCE)

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illustration virgin galactic supersonic mach 3 jet airplane high speed aircraft rolls royce 3

  • Virgin Galactic, the space-tourism company founded by Richard Branson, wants to pursue high-speed passenger travel as well.
  • On Monday, Virgin Galactic revealed a preliminary design for a supersonic jet capable of flying up to 19 people at Mach 3, or 2,300 mph.
  • Publishing the design is a very early step — even with very fast development it would still be years before the plane could fly.
  • A Virgin Galactic executive previously told Business Insider that the company thinks high-speed passenger travel could be a $15 billion annual business.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Not long after Virgin Galactic unveiled the interior design of its rocket-powered SpaceShipTwo, built to fly tourists beyond the edge of space and back, the company revealed plans for a foray into high-speed passenger travel.

On Monday, Virgin Galactic, founded by Richard Branson, published a high-level design for a new supersonic jet capable of flying nine to 19 people from New York City to London in about 90 minutes.

It said it planned to build the high-speed aircraft with the help of Rolls-Royce, the company that built the afterburner turbojet engines for the discontinued Concorde jet.

Virgin Galactic said that it was also working with NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration to realize the new aircraft and that, to that end, it recently completed what's called a mission concept review.

The review is an early but essential step in certifying a vehicle for flight. Even with very fast development, it may take many years before such a plane would actually be ready to carry passengers.

illustration virgin galactic supersonic mach 3 jet airplane high speed aircraft rolls royce 3

The preliminary design for the unnamed aircraft — though the illustrations list "N2000VG" on its tail — suggests it will have delta wings and be capable of traveling at Mach 3, or about 2,300 mph, at an altitude of roughly 60,000 feet.

The Concorde jet, which retired in 2003, was capable of Mach 2, or about 1,300 mph.

"We are excited to complete the Mission Concept Review and unveil this initial design concept of a high speed aircraft, which we envision as blending safe and reliable commercial travel with an unrivalled customer experience," George Whitesides, Virgin Galactic's former CEO and new chief space officer, said in a press release.

"We have made great progress so far, and we look forward to opening up a new frontier in high speed travel," he added.

A $15 billion annual business?

illustration virgin galactic supersonic mach 3 jet airplane high speed aircraft rolls royce 3

In a recent interview with Business Insider, Whitesides (then Virgin Galactic's CEO) said the company wanted to expand well beyond suborbital space tourism and break into frequent supersonic passenger travel.

He said Virgin Galactic hoped to leverage its growing flight data and operations experience, along with new research and development, into a new high-speed transportation system.

The goal: Claim a fraction of the airline industry's premium long-haul travel business, which totals about $300 billion a year.

"If we can just capture 5% or something like that, then it's still a huge number," Whitesides told Business Insider in May, adding that $10 billion to $15 billion in revenue "is a massive opportunity."

He said he believes people will want to go places faster in smaller vehicles and will be willing to pay for the privilege. "The things that we're working on are very much part of our aviation future," he said.

The gap for such operations is wide open, given that the Concorde, a supersonic passenger airliner, retired in 2003.

Concorde

That's not to say it will be easy or inexpensive to reclaim, improve, and expand such business territory, but Whitesides said Virgin Galactic was up to the challenge, even in the face of failures in creating supersonic and even hypersonic passenger vehicles.

"The words 'many companies have tried' is music to my ears," Whitesides said. "People said we couldn't build up a human-spaceflight company. People say we couldn't go public."

Whitesides said that flying passengers in SpaceShipTwo at Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound — the vehicle's top speed, which it uses to fly more than 50 miles above Earth — would help Virgin Galactic gain an edge over competitors in the supersonic-jet space.

Virgin Galactic's growing rocketry know-how with SpaceShipTwo might also eventually be leveraged into a hypersonic system that could fly between Mach 5 and 25.

This is what SpaceX hopes to eventually do with its fully reusable Starship-Super Heavy launch system. In theory, such a hypersonic vehicle could get from New York to Shanghai in less than an hour.

But Whitesides said that hypersonic speeds introduced lots of complexity and that a Mach 3 aircraft made more sense to pursue initially.

Virgin Galactic provided no timeline for actually building, testing, and ultimately flying passengers on the new supersonic jet aircraft.

"It's not going to be next year, but it is something that I think we can continue to work on in a sort of a staged approach and hopefully change the world," Whitesides previously told Business Insider.

Virgin Galactic, which posted a $60 million loss in the first quarter and a $73 million loss the quarter before that, plans to host its 2020 second-quarter earnings call at 5 p.m. ET on Monday.

Have a story or inside information to share about the spaceflight industry? Send Dave Mosher an email at dmosher+tips@businessinsider.com or a Twitter direct message at @davemosher. More secure communication options are listed here.

SEE ALSO: Virgin Galactic thinks it can leverage its space-tourism program into a $15 billion-a-year high-speed travel business

DON'T MISS: Take a virtual look inside Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo — a rocket ship designed to fly passengers on the $250,000 trip of their lives

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why NASA waited nearly a decade to send astronauts into space from the US


Dealership owner from 'The Real Housewives of New Jersey' and FBI's Most Wanted list admits to role in fraud scheme

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Afzal Khan wanted

  • Afzal Khan of New Jersey was arrested earlier this year and admitted to committing fraudulent activity through his car dealership between 2013 and 2014.
  • After Khan was accused of fraud, he fled the US and the FBI put him on its Most Wanted list.
  • Khan has appeared on "The Real Housewives of New Jersey." His clients included members of the cast, according to OK! Magazine.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

After a stint on "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" and five years on the run from United States authorities, one former car dealer admitted his role in a large, supercar-laden fraud scheme earlier this month. 

Afzal "Bobby" Khan, 38, of New Jersey, pleaded guilty to wire fraud via a video conference before United States District Judge William J. Martini on August 19, according to an announcement from the US Attorney's Office, District of New Jersey. 

Khan admitted to his role in fraudulent activity through his car dealership, Emporio Motor Group, in Ramsey, New Jersey. The indictment charged him with defrauding lenders and customers by getting loans from the car financing arm of "a large bank for cars" and never delivering the vehicles, despite the customer still being responsible for them.

Additionally, the indictment said, Khan received loans from the bank for cars that neither he nor Emporio had titles for but still delivered. Because of that, the buyers were liable for the loans but couldn't register the cars. 

Finally, Khan was charged with offering to sell cars for people on consignment, but failed to return cars or any money to the owners after the sales.

The activity took place from December 2013 to September 2014, according to court proceedings. The warrant for his arrest was issued on October 21, 2014.

His actions, Khan admitted, lost the bank at least $550,000. The Department of Justice's release said he's facing a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, and his sentencing is scheduled for December 17, 2020.

Khan's history with law enforcement spans years. A story published on Wednesday in The Scottish Sun reported that Khan fled the US after being accused of fraudulent activity. The Federal Bureau of Investigation put him on its Most Wanted list and offered a reward of up to $20,000 for information leading to his arrest.

FBI Most Wanted Afzal Khan

In February, after five years on the run, The Scottish Sun reported that Khan handed himself over to authorities in the United Arab Emirates. He then flew back to the US, where he's been in custody.

While maintaining his dealership, Khan also appeared on the reality TV show "The Real Housewives of New Jersey," according to OK! Magazine. The outlet noted that his scheme included Lamborghinis, Rolls-Royces, and Porsches, and that his clients included members of the cast. 

SEE ALSO: Florida man charged in federal court with using coronavirus relief funds to buy himself a brand-new Lamborghini

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The yellow Rolls-Royce driven by Robert Redford in 'The Great Gatsby' could fetch $2 million at auction — take a closer look at the famed car

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1928 Rolls Royce 40:50hp Phantom I Ascot Dual Cowl Sport Phaeton_15

  • The 1928 Rolls-Royce 40/50hp Phantom I Ascot Dual Cowl Sport Phaeton used in the 1974 film "The Great Gatsby" is headed to auction via Classic Promenade Auctions.
  • From 2011 to 2019, it underwent a ground-up restoration that cost $1.2 million.
  • It is estimated to sell for between $1.5 million and $2 million.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Scott Fitzgerald fans rejoice: You'll soon have a shot at owning the iconic yellow Rolls-Royce famously featured in the 1974 film "The Great Gatsby," which starred Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. 

The 1928 Rolls-Royce 40/50hp Phantom I Ascot Dual Cowl Sport Phaeton will be auctioned through Classic Promenade Auctions starting on Monday, October 12, Hagerty first reported. An emailed press release claims that this example is believed to be the only Ascot Sport Phaeton built with the dual cowl to match the description in The Great Gatsby: "…terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns."  

In the interest of accuracy, the car was repainted in this creamy yellow color and its interior dyed green in order for it to make its film debut. 

Classic Promenade is giving the car a pre-sale estimate of between $1.5 million and $2 million. Keep scrolling to see more.

SEE ALSO: This Is The Car That Should Have Been Used In 'The Great Gatsby'

This 1928 Rolls-Royce 40/50hp Phantom I Ascot Dual Cowl Sport Phaeton is the one famously used in the 1974 film “The Great Gatsby.”



In the movie, the car is driven by Jay Gatsby, who was played by Robert Redford.



Author F. Scott Fitzgerald gave Gatsby a Rolls-Royce because it represented the utter opulence and extravagance that the character surrounded himself with.



In the book, it is described as having “a rich cream color, bright with nickel” and “a sort of green leather conservatory.”



For the movie, the car was repainted yellow and its interior dyed green to match the book’s description.



It will soon be up for online auction through Classic Promenade Auctions, which is based on Phoenix, Arizona.

You can view the listing here.



The car underwent a ground-up restoration between 2011 and 2019.



In total, the cost of the restoration was about $1.2 million.



It was even shown at the 2019 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance.



The car has appeared with Redford on magazine covers, as well as in GQ and Vogue articles.



Because of its big-screen fame, literary association, and restoration, this is a Rolls-Royce unlike any other.



Classic Promenade gives the car a pre-sale estimate of between $1.5 million and $2 million.



It shows 73,848 miles on the clock.



And looks to be truly a massive car in person.



The car was originally delivered to and owned by Mildred Loring Logan of New York City.



Later on, it was owned by George Washington Hill, the president of American Tobacco Company.



The Gatsby Rolls will be available via online auction from Monday, October 12, through Sunday, October 25.



Bidding begins at 10 a.m. PST.



The Rolls-Royce Ghost just got its first full revamp in 10 years — check out the $300,000 car's most opulent form yet

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The new Rolls Royce Ghost_4

  • The new Rolls-Royce Ghost marks the second generation of the car, whose current model starts at about $300,000.
  • It looks similar from the outside to the outgoing Ghost, but it has a slightly bigger engine and rides on a new platform. 
  • Rolls-Royce did not announce pricing or availability at this time.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The all-new, second-generation Rolls-Royce Ghost is here. Visually, it looks very similar to the outgoing model. But what's changed really lies beneath the surface. 

Introduced in 2009, the Ghost was meant to be the smaller and more attainable (hah) Rolls-Royce model — less expensive than the bigger Phantom. It's undergone some changes since then, including a 2014 refresh and a move to an aluminum space-frame platform that was announced in 2016.

But Rolls-Royce said in creating new Ghost, the only things it carried over were its Spirit of Ecstasy emblem and famous umbrellas. There's still a twin-turbocharged V12 engine, but it now has a displacement of 6.75 liters instead of 6.6. Power comes to a claimed 563 brake horsepower and 627 pound-feet of torque, Rolls-Royce said, with all-wheel drive and all-wheel steering.

Rolls-Royce didn't mention how much the new Ghost will cost or when it will be available, but the current car starts at about $300,000. Keep scrolling to learn more about it — and also to see the lovely interior, as Rolls-Royce models always have.

SEE ALSO: The yellow Rolls-Royce driven by Robert Redford in 'The Great Gatsby' could fetch $2 million at auction — take a closer look at the famed car

The new Rolls-Royce Ghost marks the car's second generation.



Visually, it doesn’t look terribly different from the outgoing Ghost.



But this will mark the first time that the famed Spirit of Ecstasy isn’t surrounded by panel lines, but instead “sits within her own ‘lake’ of bonnet.”



There's a 6.75-liter, twin-turbocharged V12 beneath the hood, or "bonnet," as it's called in England.



It makes a claimed 563 brake horsepower and 627 pound-feet of torque.



There’s also all-wheel drive and all-wheel steering, which should make the Ghost feel much smaller than it is when you drive it.



The new Ghost also rides on Rolls-Royce’s new aluminum space-frame platform that’s found in the current Phantom and Cullinan.



The suspension system was completely redesigned to improve upon the famed Magic Carpet Ride quality.



But as with all Rolls-Royce models, the inside is where it shines.



Only the best quality leathers, woods, and metals were used in the interior, Rolls-Royce said.



You wouldn’t want to put your shoes on this.



The "Illuminated Fascia" has the "Ghost" name surrounded by more than 850 "stars," which are generated from 152 LEDs that are mounted above and beneath the fascia.

No, it's not a screen. 



That fascia is similar to the iconic starlight headliner, which transforms the ceiling into a starry night sky.



Open-pore wood is available.



This is a car you want to be driven around in instead of driving yourself.



But if you do opt to drive it, you’d still be surrounded by a cocoon of luxury.



Rolls-Royce did not announce pricing for the new Ghost at this time, but the current car starts at about $300,000. Expect to pay a pretty penny for all this opulence.



Rolls-Royce designed the all-new, $332,000 Ghost sedan to embrace 'post-opulence' minimalism — here's how it compares to the outgoing model

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The new Rolls Royce Ghost_4

Summary List Placement

The Rolls-Royce Ghost, which just got its first full overhaul in a decade, doesn't need much of an introduction. It's the $300,000 sedan people often buy to be driven around in — not by a computer, but by a human chauffeur, because a computer won't make a show of opening the doors for you when you get in and out. 

But those looking for an all-new ride won't find one in the new Ghost. While the second-generation Ghost is distinct from the outgoing car, Rolls tweaked, rather than overhauled, a lot of style and comfort elements.

rolls royce ghost

The Ghost debuted in 2009, a smaller and less expensive (lol) option for folks who had $300,000 to spare but couldn't quite commit to a $450,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom. You know, everyday problems. It underwent a few facelifts and changes afterward, including the most recent 2014 "Ghost Series II" refresh pictured in the above comparison, and a switch to an aluminum space-frame platform announced in 2016.

The idea of appealing to the $300,000 sedan market turned out to be a good one: Rolls calls the Ghost the "most successful product in the company's 116-year history."

The new Rolls Royce Ghost_14

Rolls-Royce said in creating the first entirely new Ghost in a decade, the only things the designers carried over were the famous Spirit of Ecstasy emblem and the umbrellas. 

The new, $332,000 Ghost thus prides itself on a few things: a more minimalist approach, updated exterior and interior styling, illuminating its branding even more luxuriously, eliminating panel lines, all-wheel drive and all-wheel steering, and a 6.75-liter twin-turbocharged V12 engine in place of the outgoing 6.6-liter one. 

Rolls says this more minimalist approach — which it has dubbed "Post Opulence"— is "perfectly in tune with the times." Take that as you will.

rolls royce ghost

But Rolls kept the vibe and shape of the Ghost the same, because everyone knows a Rolls-Royce when they see one. Exterior changes came in a few main areas, including more squared-off headlights with sharper illumination lines; a single black grille opening that wraps up and around, kind of like a 64-bit handlebar mustache; and an all-around, slightly more square appearance. 

With the updated styling, the new Ghost slots itself right in as a mini Phantom: big, flashy, and extremely rectangular.

rolls royce phantom

Inside, you'll find a lot of familiar shapes. The infotainment layout and controls don't appear to have changed much, but the accents are new: available open-pore wood in lieu of the glossy stuff, and the new "GHOST" branding across the dashboard, lit with more LEDs than you've probably got in your house.

That's right, the fancy "GHOST" bit on the left is not a screen. It's a bunch of LED "stars" illuminating the dashboard.

rolls royce ghost

Other elements of the car are simplified, yet keep the general character of the Ghost. Rolls wanted to focus on the quality of the materials with this car, not "busy stitching and other devices that create an illusion of luxury by dressing products lacking in substance in a premium skin." Ouch. 

The new Rolls Royce Ghost_13

The Ghost has a 50:50 weight distribution, Rolls said, kind of like a Mazda Miata, or two elephants on a seesaw. Its V12 will make a claimed 563 brake horsepower and 627 pound-feet of torque, and it'll do so in near silence, as far as the passengers are concerned.

So little noise reaches the cabin, in fact, that Rolls-Royce said the silence was disorienting and made a whole show of creating a serene undertone for passengers to hear instead. 

rolls royce ghost

For the new car, Rolls carried over its concept of a satellite-aided transmission, which "draws GPS data to pre-select the optimum gear" for whatever the car is about to do, such as taking an upcoming corner.

That's paired with a camera system to monitor the road ahead and adjust the suspension to approach it in the smoothest possible way, creating what Rolls calls a "sense of flight on land"— flight without turbulence or the sound of the person in the middle seat snoring, of course.

rolls royce ghost

From the outside, the new Ghost will be bigger than the old one in every dimension. It's about 5.4 inches longer, 8.3 inches wider, and an inch taller than the 2020 model, yet remains in the 5,600-pound range — the approximate weight of a Toyota Tundra.

Rolls expects the new Ghost to get between 10.5 and 10.7 mpg in the city, compared to the outgoing 2020 model's EPA-estimated 12 mpg.

rolls royce ghost

Rolls-Royce calls the new Ghost "designed, crafted and engineered from the ground up" when compared to the last one. But in a lot of ways, it follows much of the ethos of the outgoing model — the model that became the most popular car in Rolls' history. 

That's because, at the end of the day, you give the people what they like. And the people seem to like their Ghost just the way it is.

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Rolls-Royce will build an electric vehicle within the next decade to keep up with tightening emissions laws

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Rolls Royce Ghost Zenith Collection

Summary List Placement

With emissions regulations tightening and at least 20 major city centers worldwide planning to ban combustion-engine cars by 2030, automakers are scrambling to make their lineups more sustainable and less reliant on fossil fuels. That includes companies synonymous with high class and low fuel economy. 

Automotive News Europe's Nick Gibbs reports that Rolls-Royce, whose $500,000 Phantom sedan currently gets an EPA-estimated 12 mpg in the city, plans to release an electric vehicle in the next decade. That would make it a relative latecomer to the EV train, as many companies have already laid out ambitious plans for stepping down production of gas-powered cars in the near future.

Although many brands sell a hybrid first before diving into EV production, Rolls-Royce CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös told Automotive News Europe that his company will skip that step and go straight to an all-electric car. Rolls-Royce doesn't do things halfway, and Müller-Ötvös said electric power "fits perfectly" with the Rolls-Royce brand, since it's "silent and torquey." 

The brand's first EV is already in development and could take the place of the Wraith and Dawn models, Automotive News Europe reported. 

But it isn't about demand, Automotive News Europe reported. Rolls-Royce's plans to get into the EV game come directly as a result of the strict emissions regulations set to arrive in the near future. 

"There is no demand from customers but we need to be in a position to sell them a car if legislation forbids them from driving a combustion engine car into the center of a city," a company spokesperson told the outlet.

Rolls-Royce won't be the first super-high-end car brand to change up its business as emissions laws tighten.

Bugatti announced in 2018 it won't build another one of its renowned 16-cylinder engines, and that it will eventually electrify its cars in some way. Bentley, one of Rolls-Royce's close competitors, plans to offer a hybrid version of each of its models and to bring an electric vehicle to market by 2025. 

Read the full Automotive News Europe story here.

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Betting against the FTSE 100 netted traders £418 million in September. These are the 5 most and least profitable short sells last month

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Financial market figures are shown on big screens and a ticker in the main entrance at London Stock Exchange

Summary List Placement

Short-sellers made a profit of £418 million across the entire FTSE 100 index in September, according to recent analysis from Ortex Analytics, a global financial-analytics company.

The FTSE 100 was one of the worst-performing major indexes in Europe in September, as a surge in cases of COVID-19 and tighter restrictions on movement, coupled with renewed concern over Brexit, hit UK assets harder than most regional markets. The index fell 2%, compared with a 1.6% fall in the eurozone Stoxx 50.

The FTSE tracks the 100 companies on the London Stock Exchange with the highest market capitalization. Overall, short-sellers made a profit on 53 out of the 100 companies in the index.

FTSE 100 index on October 7

Some of the FTSE's heavyweight stocks are those that have been worst-hit by the economic fallout of the pandemic, including the jet-engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce; airlines, such as British Airways' parent company, IAG; and financial stock, such as HSBC or Barclays.

Short-selling is when an investor borrows a security and sells it in the current market. They are betting on the security going down in price, in which case they will buy it back at a later date and hopefully at a lower price.

Short-selling has a high risk-to-reward ratio. An investor can secure significant profits but can also end up with infinite losses if not careful. In August, Ortex Analytics found that short-sellers recorded losses of £420 million.

"Last month we saw a number of big trades turn sour for short-sellers, which impacted overall profitability in August," said Peter Hillerberg, a cofounder of Ortex Analytics, in a press release. "At the time, we predicted that the pendulum may swing back the other way in September, and that's exactly what we've seen as short-sellers continue to profit from the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic."

Ortex Analytics outlined the five most profitable and least profitable shorts in September.

"What has been fascinating to note is the extent of the swing for some companies — four of the top five most profitable trades this month were significant loss-making trades in August, highlighting the speed at which fortunes can change during this volatile period," Hillerberg said.

Most profitable

1) Rolls-Royce Holdings plc

Rolls-Royce stock on October 7

Ticker: RR

Short profit:£187.7 million

2) International Consolidated Airlines Group, SA

International Consolidated Airlines S.A. stock on October 7

Ticker: IAG

Short profit:£168.8 million

3) BHP Group plc

BHP Group plc stock on October 7

Ticker: BHP

Short profit:£125.1 million

4) Royal Dutch Shell Group plc

Royal Dutch Shell stock on October 7

Ticker: RDSA

Short profit:£115.1 million

5) Wm Morrison Supermarkets plc

WM Morrison Supermarkets stock on October 7

Ticker: MRW

Short profit:£24.8 million

Least profitable

1) British American Tobacco plc

British American Tobacco stock on October 7

Ticker: BATS

Short profit: -£49.4 million

2) Ocado Group plc

Ocado Group stock on October 7

Ticker: OCDO

Short profit: -£48.5 million

3) Just Eat Takeaway.com

Just Eat Takeaway stock on October 7

Ticker: JET

Short profit: -£27.9 million

4) Unilever Plc

Unilever Group stock on October 7

Ticker: ULVR

Short profit: -£23.6 million

5) DS Smith Plc

DS Smith Plc Stock on October 7

Ticker: SMDS

Short profit: -£18.6 million

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NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

A Dutch company transformed the $330,000 Rolls-Royce Wraith into a beautiful wagon — tour the Silver Spectre

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Niels van Roij Design Silver Spectre Shooting Brake_1

Summary List Placement

One of the most under-utilized automotive body styles is the shooting brake. And since there currently are no Rolls-Royce shooting-brake models, Dutch car design company Niels van Roij Design made one.

Well, actually, it made seven. Meet the Niels van Roij Design Silver Spectre Shooting Brake.

A shooting brake, essentially, is a two-door station wagon. It has coupe styling but with additional practicality, sometimes in the form of rear seats or an elongated trunk. It's not a popular way to design a car these days, but they're always special to see. 

Niels van Roij Design's Silver Spectre Shooting Brake is based off a Rolls-Royce Wraith. From the A-pillars back, the Silver Spectre is all custom: The roof is made from one piece of carbon-fiber composite, the lengthened and custom side glass is trimmed in silver, and the back liftgate apparently takes design cues from "Anglian limousines of the 1950s and 1960s," according to Autoblog

Inside, the Shooting Brake boasts the "world's largest Infinity Starlight Headliner" with a hand-woven spread of fiber-optic strands that make up almost 2,000 lights, the company said in an emailed press release. 

Niels van Roij Design will only make seven Silver Spectre Shooting Brakes. Van Roij declined to disclose the price of the cars to Business Insider, instead saying that, "The price is on request for clients. Due to the vast amount of possibilities, it is near impossible to define a price to begin with, as it is distilled from the conversation with the patron and based on her or his personal wishes."

Read on to see more of the Niels van Roij Design Silver Spectre Shooting Brake.

SEE ALSO: A one-of-a-kind Tesla Model S station wagon is now for sale for $200,000 — see inside the 'Model SB'

Meet the Niels van Roij Design Silver Spectre Shooting Brake — a shooting brake version of the Rolls-Royce Wraith, designed by Dutch designer, Niels van Roij.

Source: Autoblog



You'll remember Niels van Roij's work from the Tesla Model SB, a custom Model S station wagon.

Read about it here.

Source: Niels van Roij



A shooting brake is a type of design that's most accurately described as a two-door station wagon.



For reference, here's what a normal Rolls-Royce Wraith looks like. It's cool, but not shooting brake cool.



The car is spacious for both front and rear passengers.



Inside, it's upholstered in highly individualistic color schemes and materials.



The rear seats are separated by an opening between them.



But check out this trunk!



It has padded, soft leather upholstery.



The shape is very rounded and curved.



I'd personally be very hesitant to put anything back there that might scratch the leather.



The company also claims the "world's largest Infinity Starlight Headliner." It's completely hand-woven, has fiber-optic strands that make up almost 2,000 lights, and can be seen from all four seats.



That headliner makes the scenery inside the car almost as interesting as the scenery outside of it.



Behind the A-pillars, the Silver Spectre Shooting Brake is custom-bodied.

Source: Autoblog



The roof is made from one big piece of carbon-fiber composite.

Source: Autoblog



The side glass was lengthened and is custom made.

Source: Autoblog



It's also trimmed with silver.

Source: Autoblog



The back liftgate is meant to remind you of vintage and stately English limousines of the '50s and '60s, according to the company.



There's also a slight power bump from the standard 632 horsepower to 700 horsepower.



Niels van Roij Design is only making seven examples of the Silver Spectre Shooting Brake.



Each one is totally bespoke, with individual color schemes available for the exterior and interior, as well as pinstripes applied by hand.



Niels Van Roij declined to tell Business Insider how much each one would cost.



"The price is on request for clients," Niels van Roij said. "Due to the vast amount of possibilities, it is near impossible to define a price to begin with, as it is distilled from the conversation with the patron and based on her or his personal wishes."




Driving a $430,000 Rolls-Royce Ghost reminded me that opulence has no limits and neither does my mediocrity

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rollls-royce ghost launch

Summary List Placement

To most, a Rolls-Royce is more an idea than a car. It might have four wheels, seat belts, and a steering wheel, but those are secondary to the abstraction: a land yacht that doesn't roll across roads but slides across glass, floating on a cloud of affluence and ostentatious display. Few have the status or wealth necessary to climb through its coach doors, which automatically open outward at the tug of a switch or push of a button, yet it's hard to imagine anything other than a cloud of opulence waiting for passengers on the other side. 

That's the thing about a Rolls-Royce. It comes with expectations — nay, conceptions — whether you're at the wheel or your chauffeur is. 

Rolls-Royce Ghost.

That includes the $330,000 Ghost, a sedan introduced in 2009 as a smaller, less expensive choice for those not quite in the ballpark of the $460,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom yet. The Ghost can be optioned up toward the Phantom's starting price, of course, but not everyone wants to spend that extra cash. 

The Ghost went relatively unchanged for a decade after its debut, aside from a few tweaks and a 2014 refresh. But earlier this year, Rolls teased the all-new Ghost along with its all-new identity: "post opulence," aka displays of exorbitant wealth that don't "shout, but rather, whisper."

Minimalism, you might call it. You might also call it "trying to blend in amid the inevitable peasant uprising."

Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Rolls-Royce said the new Ghost, like the old one, is designed to "resonate with clients for the next 10 years." But today's Rolls-Royce is different from the one of 2010: Between then and 2019, the average age of the company's customers dropped from 56 to 43.

There wasn't just an age shift. Rolls noticed a character shift, too. 

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

"Due to Ghost's energetic, dynamic personality, clients came to realise that the Rolls-Royce brand could offer more than a chauffeur-driven experience," the company said upon announcing the new car. "Indeed, in the United States of America and areas of Europe, clients were self-driving their Ghost from the very early stages of its introduction."

That's why you might notice the Phantom to be more back-heavy and the Ghost to be more even — one is meant for chauffeur duty and the other for shared responsibility.

rolls royce ghost phantom

The only things that would be carried over from the old Ghost into the new one, Rolls said, were the automaker's Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament and its famous umbrellas.

Yet the final product, which debuted in Austin in September, took strong cues from the last car.

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Stepping into a Rolls-Royce for the first time, as I did at the Ghost launch, was a clash of two realities: the Rolls-Royce I'd fabricated in my mind and the Rolls-Royce I was actually inside. It was both this distant idea and this thing that was right in front of me, at the same time. The extraterrestrial became the terrestrial, with me sitting right in the center of it as the carmaker's famed starlight headliner (now with shooting stars!) glowed above me.

It might be noon and clear as day outside, but in a Rolls-Royce, you remain a star among stars. At least, I think that's what they're trying to tell you. It's what I'd want to hear from someone on the other side of my $500,000 check. 

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

My first trip in the new Ghost came with a chauffeur, who drove me to a launch event as I sat in the back seat poking and handling everything I could. I now regret leaving finger grease all over the car.

"Have you felt the floor mats?" the driver asked. 

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

I had, in a way. Immediately upon getting in, the ground below me became soft. Pillowy. How I imagine every billionaire's white, ethereal movie room — or whatever the most comfortable area of their house is — would be like to sit in.

I then took another look at my black heeled combat boots, which seemed fashionable and appropriate just minutes ago, and remembered I'd last worn them to trudge around New York City in January. They now seemed dirty. Unworthy to grace this pristine white lambswool. As if I should take them off immediately. 

But if I take them off, I thought, will I look like a weirdo trying to dig her stinky toes into this fancy car's fancy amenities? The classic lose-lose situation. 

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

So, no, I hadn't felt them physically. But I'd felt them, socially and emotionally. I took the driver's words as a cue to reach down and actually feel them without looking like a total nerd, my fingers getting lost in what must have been inches of wool. 

I don't remember what I said in response, but I do remember feeling even worse about the shoes.

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Actually driving the car came with a host of other crises. "Get in and familiarize yourself," the team at the launch told us. After a few minutes, someone came to my window. "Any questions?" 

A few. What does this button do? What about the fancy dial thingy in the center-console area? How do I adjust the mirrors? How did someone like me, a lowly Criss Angel stan who happens to write about cars, get on this invite list? 

As to not look too stupid, I boiled my list down to one question — the existential question, which I'd never really asked before and didn't think to research beforehand. "How do I put it in 'drive'?"

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

And off we went. Some of the first entries in my meticulous drive notes on the Ghost went like this: 

  • WHERE ARE THE CLIMATE CONTROLS 
  • Keep reaching to pull the door closed, but you have to use the button so the car will close the door for you! I am a sucker for manual labor!
  • THE VOLUME KNOB WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME THE WHOLE TIME 

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

You see, a Rolls-Royce interior is its own species, not to be bothered with silly things like "labels" or "familiar placement of controls," because labels and familiarity are for those unworthy of a $430,000 car like this one — complete with its $332,000 starting price and $100,000 in optional features. A Rolls-Royce interior is one you have to adjust to, where the buttons and knobs aren't in the same place as they usually are and where the climate controls don't show the interior temperatures in blocky, alarm-clock looking numbers. 

Everything inside of a Rolls is delicately integrated into a silky design, meant to be beautiful to the eyes and easy to the touch. If you're used to driving cars not in the half-million price range, that makes it hard as hell to find anything. 

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

After several rounds of "Damn it! Damn it! It's cold in here!" at stoplights, I finally found the most important object on my search: the climate dials. Their red and blue colorations were so faint that I hadn't picked up on them, and their designs so smooth that it never occurred to me that those dials did anything. 

I slid the smooth dial all the way red, sat back, and found peace. 

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

The peace wasn't long for this world. I hadn't cared much about the radio up until that point, but you know what they say about life: When you solve one problem, you discover three more. 

Soft snaps from the intro to 2 Chainz's "It's a Vibe" began to bump through what I can only assume were the fanciest speakers I've ever listened to, at volume levels far too low for such a tune.

I instinctively reached for a volume knob near the bottom corner of the infotainment screen, to be met with nothing. I poked around the screen. Nothing. I twisted and tugged every knob I could reach. Nothing. I zoomed in and out of the navigation map with one knob. No luck.

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

All the while, 2 Chainz bragged through my still-quiet speakers: OK, so I got the ambiance just where I want it. 

Lucky you, 2 Chainz. 

I found the volume knob about 10 minutes after the song ended, tucked so perfectly into the dashboard's open-pore wood that I thought it was there for decoration. The radio was, finally, a vibe. I was obviously not.

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

The Ghost, once you learn its alien rituals and control knobs, is a mystical being. It's a staple of not only the wealthiest among us, but what awaits them: a vertical-slat grille that's iconic in design alone, yet has a warm backlight to make the car glow at night. Rolls' staple starlight headliner, made not from stamping the parts through a factory but by cutting fiber optics by hand to create individual stars in a "random but uniform" imitation of the night sky. A 6.75-liter, twin-turbocharged V12 engine whose claimed 563 horsepower has an unmatched duality: slick and quiet for chauffeurs, yet able to rocket up to speed with a punch of the gas pedal.

Features so intricate that each fold-away tray table, cupholder, and emblem can slide into various positions so gracefully, they're more reminiscent of ballet performers than anything belonging in a car. A hood emblem so fancy that should you fear theft, it'll fold into the bonnet and hide away until you've returned to your gated community. 

The Ghost is defined by its extras — unnecessary in theory, yet magical in practice. But much like Disneyland or whatever loosely governed hellscape Elon Musk wants to create on Mars, I guess anything can be magical at a certain price point. 

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Before I stepped into one, a Rolls-Royce was more of a concept than anything concrete: a floating, mystical being unconnected to the road or world around it, because the world around it simply isn't worthy. It still largely is a concept — a big, sparkly cloud in my mind labeled "fancy."

But driving the Ghost came with the realization that it's more of a car than I ever imagined. The road below and the world around it don't disappear, they're simply numbed — with surrounding cars heard and potholes felt, ever so faintly, to remind its owners that they aren't in Heaven yet, but they could definitely afford the penthouse suite when they get there. 

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

As for me, a humble blogger cosplaying a Rolls-Royce driver for the day, I learned a few things about myself as well. Namely, I learned there are two types of people in this world: those whose $430,000 Rolls-Royce Ghosts include fancy lambswool floor mats, and bystanders who just want to dig their crusty appendages into them. 

"Oh dude," my colleague Kristen Lee said. "When I saw those, I wanted to strip naked and live in them." 

You could probably guess which group we belong in.

♦♦♦

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

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A Rolls-Royce designer explains how the $300,000 Ghost meets ultra-wealthy customers' desire for elegant minimalism over 'premium mediocracy'

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The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Summary List Placement

Modern cars in the "costs as much as a house" price range often scream their price with design features alone. Waves of diamond-quilted stitching on seats and doors. Mood lighting. Accents with accents on their accents. Quilted stitching with extra quilts, for extra fanciness. Materials galore. Colors galore. Everything, really, galore. 

But that wasn't the goal with the second-generation Rolls-Royce Ghost, introduced this year with a new tagline and a $330,000 base price. The goal was minimalism: to create a modern Rolls-Royce without unnecessary, busy — and perhaps most importantly, susceptible to going out of style — features to revolutionize its look.

There's a reason, after all, that a Rolls-Royce looks like a Rolls-Royce, whether it's from 2003 or 2020. There are rules to this game.

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Henry Cloke, the head exterior designer on the Ghost, said he started work on the car six years before its debut — around the time the last major refresh came out on the first generation of the Ghost, which debuted in 2009 and got its facelift in 2014.

When the 2021 Ghost came around, it took strong cues from the old one. The overall styling was similar, as was the whisper-quiet V12 engine. But details showed an elegant, minimalist modernization of the car, inspired by what Rolls called a "shifting attitude among Ghost clients in the way success is expressed."

rolls royce ghost

To satisfy that shift, Cloke said a few things guided the design process on the new Ghost: Rolls' historical elements, such as the automaker's Spirit of Ecstasy hood emblem; the company's new concept of "post opulence," in which features "don't shout, but rather, whisper" their luxury; and a goal of aging gracefully through a six-year development period and a lengthy stay on the market. 

rolls royce ghost

After the first-generation car's run from 2009 through 2020, Rolls-Royce said it wanted "a new product that would resonate with Ghost clients for the next 10 years"— or, as Cloke described it, one akin to "certain pieces of clothing that are simple enough that you feel that you can adapt them to all of these different scenarios." 

Achieving that, Cloke said, meant trying to "really understand what [buyers] loved about the first Ghost." But it's not about particular features or trends. It's more meta than that.

"Not 'I liked the headlamp that was this shape,' but the fact that 'I liked it because I felt I could use it to go to a friend's house and also to a business meeting and also to a big event, and somehow it fit in all of those scenarios,'" Cloke said, describing something you can also do in a Toyota Camry. But a Rolls-Royce isn't a Toyota Camry, since a $400,000 car blends in at the grocery store about as well as the Space Needle would in a forest. 

rolls royce ghost

The guiding principle, then, was minimalism. Or if you want to get fancy, "post opulence." 

"This philosophy is the antithesis of 'premium mediocracy,'" the company said upon announcing the new Ghost, a jab at most other luxury automakers. "This refers to products that use superficial treatments, such as large branding or, in the context of motor cars, busy stitching and other devices that create an illusion of luxury by dressing products lacking in substance in a premium skin."

Your diamond quilts? To Rolls-Royce, they're not as cute as you think they are.

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Cloke alluded to "post opulence" as a mixture of elements: historical, fancy but not busy or gaudy, future-focused, timeless, minimalist. Ready for a 10-year stay on the market.

As evidenced by the $110,000 Nissan GT-R, that's a century in the life of most cars. For the Ghost, it's just the standard.

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

The new Ghost might look a lot like the last one on the surface due to its staples: the Spirit of Ecstasy hood emblem, coach door handles, and Pantheon grille. But look closer and the company's design team built on — and subtracted from, in that "minimalism" spirit — each to make the car more modern and more evolved. 

Rolls-Royce added a soft light behind the slatted, stainless-steel front grille, and Cloke said the company went through several iterations of it before landing on the right one — the one with a "warm glow," not a "super techie blue light that [seems] futuristic."

"Our first iterations were much too bright, because if you fully polish everything and then add light, it didn't fit with this calm mood we wanted to create," Cloke said. "That's why the backs of all of those individual veins have actually been sandblasted, so they're effectively matte on the backside and gloss on the front side."

rolls royce ghost first generation second generation

Rolls-Royce also loves to describe the Spirit of Ecstasy emblem as "on the edge of an infinity pool." While the first-generation Ghost had a whole lot of lines cutting across its nose and hood, the new one pares those distractions down. 

That paring down, Cloke said, speaks to the whole car — and it's something lead engineer Jonathan Simms said was unpopular with the people creating it at first, since part of the fun with many ultra-luxury cars is seeing just how cool of a design you can create in that diamond-quilted stitching. 

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

But busy features like that can hide imperfections, such as a missed stitch here or there. That wasn't what Rolls wanted.

"You actually have to [tell the] craftspeople, 'Hang on, we don't want to show what you can do by putting additional details in — we want to show what you can do by removing any opportunity you've got to make a mistake," Simms said. "But actually when you get the [craftspeople] coming along and really starting to see how proud they are of putting out a part that looks as perfectly finished with just those minimal details, it's actually a really nice journey to go on."

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Heritage also doesn't just inspire certain features like the Spirit of Ecstasy. It inspires the car's entire shape. That's why the Ghost and Phantom, for example, taper from a large, imposing front end to a tight boat-like tail at the back. 

Cloke said a Rolls-Royce "should look like it has motion to it"— like it has direction, even if it's not moving at all. 

"[The rear is] basically a complete contrast between the front end, where you're really trying to show the width of the car, you're trying to show this chassis is now 13 millimeters wider," Cloke said. "Then the rear end, you're doing exactly the opposite. You're trying to really taper it in."

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Another important part of a Rolls' side profile is its balance between front and back seats — whether it's the smaller Ghost sedan, the larger (and somehow even fancier) Phantom sedan, the new Cullinan SUV, or the two-door Wraith and Dawn models.

Unlike the Phantom, designed as a chauffeur car, Cloke said the design of the Ghost is all about portraying a car that customers can both "drive and be driven in."

rolls royce ghost phantom

"For Ghost, that meant having this pretty balanced cabin," Cloke said. "If you think of the Phantom cabin, it's really drawing your emphasis to the back seat, especially if it's the long wheelbase. With the Wraith, obviously the minute you open the door, you probably want to get in it and drive it because it's looking toward the front seat. 

"So, it's not necessarily that we have one rule book across the whole portfolio of cars. You're actually drawing up a car that specifically has to really do whatever a Phantom has to do or what a Cullinan has to do or what a Ghost has to do, so [it's about] making sure that they're all differentiated visually and even in the character, the way they drive, the way they feel — that they all have these personalities."

Rolls-Royce Ghost.

The one thing that applies to all of the cars? Balancing luxury with engineering. 

"If you have a car that is just super technical and cold, it doesn't feel like a Rolls-Royce," Cloke said. "If it's over flamboyant and it doesn't feel sincere, it also doesn't feel like a Rolls-Royce. So a huge amount of it is finding that balance point." 

Designing the Ghost was all about finding that balance point in every aspect, from timelessness to minimalism worthy of $330,000. Whether that exercise was successful is for time — and those with garages worth more than most people's homes — to decide.

SEE ALSO: Driving a $430,000 Rolls-Royce Ghost reminded me that opulence has no limits and neither does my mediocrity

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How Rolls-Royce uses thousands of tiny etchings and fiber optics to fill the $330,000 Ghost with starscapes

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The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Summary List Placement

When it comes to Rolls-Royce, the devil and the glory alike are in the details. The automaker is so obsessed with the little things, in fact, that discussing them all would take far more words than any mortal has the time for. The company's 5,000-word press releases prove that much. 

But on the new, $330,000 Rolls-Royce Ghost, there's one feature of which Rolls is particularly proud: giving the car a sort of simple warmth to help balance all of its various design and engineering influences.

"If you have a car that is just super technical and cold, it doesn't feel like a Rolls-Royce," said Henry Cloke, the Ghost's lead exterior designer, at the car's September launch in Austin. "If it's over flamboyant and it doesn't feel sincere, it also doesn't feel like a Rolls-Royce. So a huge amount of it is finding that balance point." 

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

That warm balance came partially from the car's plays on light and shadows, which could easily be overlooked as "pretty car with a pretty glow" by us normal folks. But every fiber of the Ghost's lighting came down to the minute detail. 

There are its body lines and newly created paint colors, sculpted to make a simple shape look dramatic and mixed to accentuate that drama. There's the fiber-optic night sky lighting the car's shooting-star headliner. There's the glossy "GHOST" display in front of the passenger seat, lit and polished perfectly to mimic the night sky on the ceiling. There's the car's imposing front grille, lit softy and warmly enough to make it look almost unintimidating to casual passersby.

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

"The light and shadow thing — there is obviously first the overall form of the car," Cloke said. "Although there are very few lines, the surfaces actually have kind of convex and concave bits, and you need paint with a certain level of interest in it that really shows you that light and shadow."

Cloke said some paints, like the "Tempest Grey" seen on the car in these photos, were made specifically for the new Ghost to "really reflect those shapes" and "give an attitude to the car." How paint looks is a big focus for Rolls, which has a fancy lamp that can be adjusted to show buyers what their paint will look like under the sun anywhere in the world. 

On an overcast day in Austin, it looks like this. 

Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Coming across a new Ghost at night will draw your attention toward its glowing new grille— something Cloke described as "that kind of Rolls-Royce presence, but in a really understated way."

"We wanted it that if you were driving in the evening, you could have this warm glow," Cloke said. "It's not like a big, bright light. We didn't want to have a sort of super techie blue light that sounds futuristic."

Rolls uses stainless steel instead of chrome for the Ghost's slatted Pantheon grille, but quickly learned that it would need some adjustments to get the perfect glow. 

"When it reflects the light, you get this slightly warm color," Cloke said. "But our first iterations were much too much too bright, because if you fully polish everything and then add light, it didn't fit with this calm mood we wanted to create.

"That's why you'll notice the back of all of those individual veins have actually been sandblasted, so they're effectively matte on the backside and gloss on the front side."

Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Also new on the Ghost is a twinkling display in front of the passenger seat, complete with more than 850 light-up imitation stars and a glowing "GHOST" logo. Rolls-Royce said the feature was "developed over the course of two years and more than 10,000 collective hours," and can be turned off and on.

But those stars? They aren't on a screen. Everyone has a screen these days, and Rolls-Royce drivers aren't everyone. 

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

"The illumination itself comes from 152 LEDs mounted above and beneath the fascia, each meticulously colour matched to the cabin's clock and instrument dial lighting," Rolls-Royce said upon announcing the new Ghost, adding that more than 90,000 laser-etched dots create "a twinkling effect as the eye moves across the fascia." 

Cloke said the goal with the 850 stars, just like with Rolls' famous starlight headliner, was to make them random but realistic. All of the dots can't be the same size or they won't look natural, yet all need to have a certain balance to them.

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

The surface displaying those stars is made up of three layers, including a high-gloss finish to make the surface smooth despite the etched surfaces underneath. That way, if an owner turns the stars off, it'll be like they were never there.

"I think so much of the technology was really important that it's not in your face, it's just there if you want it," Cloke said. "It just creates that mood or it gives you that function, but you're not confronted by it all the time."

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

The fascia is an extension of the starlight headliner, often imitated with aftermarket mods but always synonymous with a Rolls-Royce. While it's been around a lot longer than the twinkling display up front, the headliner is just as complicated to create. 

"Everyone takes it for granted, but actually, we've put stars on the roof of a car," Cloke said. "There are more than 1,000 fiber-optic cables that have to be put in by hand, and then what makes the star feeling is all of those fiber optics are then cut by hand with scissors at slightly different angles. 

"That means that you're not always looking at a completely 90-degree cut fiber optic, because if you did, they would all look as bright as each other and [be] the same size dots. The reason that it feels starlike is because there's a certain randomness in it."

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Sure, you could boil a Rolls-Royce's lighting down to "pretty car with a pretty glow." But that would ignore just how many hands have a role in creating each light feature, from sandblasters to paint specialists to the folks cutting individual fiber optics with scissors. 

And those are just the people involved with the lighting, not the ones perfecting stitches on the leather or melting the steel used for the Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament, which can duck away into the car's bonnet if you try to swipe it. (Good try, though!)

The Rolls-Royce Ghost.

So, when you really think about it, the devil isn't in the details — Rolls-Royce is. But you might just have to make a deal with the guy to afford the payments.

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JPMorgan names 2 cheap defense stocks to buy before they surge in 2021 — and one with a 50% downside

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ZK382 Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon T3 takes off on a training exercise RAF Coningsby

Summary List Placement

The defense sector has been one of the worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic, not least because of huge cuts to government spending. At the end of October, the sector's average price-to-earnings ratio hit a 20-year relative low against the European market, according to JPMorgan.

But sentiment on the sector started to turn last month when UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the country's biggest defense investment since the end of the Cold War.

Johnson has promised an extra £16.5 billion in addition to the annual budget, which is almost £41.5 billion, or $55.4 billion, for this financial year.

The announcement of the UK's increased spending, combined with the outlook for Europe and the US, has fed into JPMorgan analysts' positive view on the defense-and-aerospace sector.

As part of JPMorgan's Europe and Global equity outlook released Monday, the equity analyst David Perry provided insight into the sector exploring the current state, the outlook for 2021, and a few key stock picks.

The UK, the eurozone, and the US play a key role in the sector's outlook. This new report provides insight into how JPMorgan views all three markets.

The UK equity market has been upgraded to neutral, despite what analysts describe as the "worst-performing equity region" this year.

"We continue to believe that FTSE250 is a better opportunity than FTSE100, and prefer UK domestic plays vs exporters," the JPMorgan equity analyst Mislav Matejka said. "Overall though, while we expect the UK equity market to be higher next year, we do not think it will be outperforming eurozone, or global peers."

The US has also been rated neutral, while the eurozone has been rated overweight.

"Eurozone tends to do better when value outperforms, while the US is heavily tilted towards quality/ growth style," Matejka said. "We argued at the start of November that market participation would broaden into value, which should, in turn, support the better performance of eurozone versus the US."

Defense outlook

In addition to the UK's decision on defense spending, political developments in three countries in particular have made JPMorgan more optimistic on the sector:

1. France announced plans to increase defense spending in 2021 by 4.5%.

2. Germany has awarded numerous major defense contacts.

3. If Republicans maintain control of the US Senate in January's runoff elections, the resulting political gridlock would make major cuts to defense spending unlikely.

Civil aerospace outlook

On the civil aerospace side, JPMorgan's analysts are less optimistic.

The International Air Transport Association expects the global airline industry to incur materially bigger losses both in 2020 and 2021 than ever before, something that will affect the civil aerospace industry, which provides hardware and software to the airlines.

Many investors are willing to look past 2020 and 2021 and toward a 2023 and 2024 recovery. But JPMorgan points to three reasons for investor caution:

1. There is no guarantee things will be back to normal in the space of a few years.

2. "Airlines have incurred huge debts in 2020-21, and perhaps beyond, and this makes it much harder for them to pay for maintenance and new aircraft," Perry said.

3. Some civil aerospace companies burned billions of dollars in cash in 2020, which weakened their balance sheets.

Based on the positive outlook for the defense market and the more negative view on the civil aerospace sector, here are the analysts' top two picks to buy and one to avoid at all costs:

Stock Picks

1. BAE Systems

Ticker: BA

Rating: Overweight

Price target: £6.20

Potential upside (as of 11/30): 19%

Analyst commentary:"On November 12th BAE held a CMD is which it passionately argued that it expects several years of top line growth, some expansion of EBITA margins, and much improved cash conversion. The improved cash conversion is driven by lower pension deficit funding (largely over by 2022) and improved working capital practices."

Source: JPMorgan Cazenove



2. Thales

Ticker: EPA:HO

Rating: Overweight

Price target: €91.00

Potential upside (as of 11/30): 14%

Analyst commentary:"Even if we look out to 2023E, we see that Thales is trading a major discount to French A&D companies like Airbus and Safran. Thales has a good mix of businesses: c50% of sales from defense provide stability (and some growth) and the other 50% of sales offer exposure to an improving economy post COVID-19. Management is confident that in the next three years it will deliver organic sales growth, improving EBITA margins and better cash conversion."

Source: JPMorgan Cazenove



3. Rolls-Royce

Ticker: RR

Rating: Underweight

Price target:£0.50

Potential downside (as of 11/30): -50%

Analyst commentary:"RR remains the weakest company in the European A&D sector. In Civil Aero it derives most of its sales from log haul international travel, the segment that will be the slowest to recover from COVID-19. Despite raising £2bn in new equity in 2020, RR still has the weakest balance sheet in the sector. It plans to raise a further £2bn from disposals in the coming year or so, but there is no guarantee of success here. We believe there is still a meaningful risk of another equity raise in the next 12-18 months."

Source: JPMorgan Cazenove

 

 

 



Investing veteran Barry Norris is beating 95% of his peers by betting against the market's riskiest companies. He warns investors against the 'siren call' to own value stocks — and explains why he's now bearish on Rolls-Royce.

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Barry Norris, CEO and CIO of Argonaut Capital

Summary List Placement

Finding companies to bet against is essentially about having a well-honed BS antenna, said Barry Norris, founder and chief investment officer at boutique investment firm Argonaut Capital.

This year, Norris shorted two fraudulent companies whose stocks went to almost zero: the German payments firm Wirecard and Emirati chain NMC Healthcare. Individuals connected to both firms have been criminally charged amid accounting irregularities.

Norris used a complex technique that can result in significant losses if an investor uses it incorrectly. In short-selling, an investor like him bets against a company, believing the share price will drop. The investor borrows stocks from a broker with a specific return date and then sells the borrowed shares at market price, hoping they will then be able to use this money to buy the shares back at a lower price and pocket the difference.

Absolute returns

Norris leverages shorting as part of his long/short strategy for Argonaut Capital's absolute return fund. The portfolio has 43 long holdings and 29 short holdings.

The fund's goal is to provide positive absolute returns over a three-year rolling period. Absolute returns simply track a fund's performance over a certain period, while relative returns are compared to a benchmark. 

Over the years, absolute-return style funds have received scrutiny because many promised returns in any market condition over any time period. According to Morningstar, absolute return funds are expected to end 2020 with the highest-ever annual outflows.

"I think it's one of the tragic debates about absolute return that I think it was initially sold and initially viewed by a lot of people as some kind of cash-plus-return profile," Norris said.

Norris said in order for active managers to survive the disruption wrought by passive investing, they should be trying to differentiate their products. Instead, the majority try to compete by delivering returns at a low cost, he added. 

He differentiates himself by having a fund that is uncorrelated to the market, allowing it to act as a diversifier among existing funds that have market views.

"Because the [investors'] other nine funds will go up when the market goes up, and down when the market goes down, we might do the opposite," Norris said. This happened during the market crash in March: Argonaut Capital's absolute return fund was up 15% while the average Investment Association UK All Companies fund sector was down 19%.

Year-to-date, the fund has returned 16% to investors compared to the Lipper Global Alternative Long/Short Equity Europe sector, which returned -0.8%. The fund is beating 95% of its peers as its ranked fourth out of 87 funds in the sector based on this years performance.

However, Norris' investors also need to get used to dramatic drops. For the month of November, the fund returned -10% compared to the Lipper sector's 3.8%, placing it at the bottom of the ranking.

"It is a challenge to get people to not necessarily conceptually get the idea of diversification from an uncorrelated return profile, but just to have the discipline to understand that our return profiles will always be an outlier with the other funds that they own. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we are more risky than the other funds they own," Norris said.

Norris' long/short strategy

At the core of the long/short strategy is a focus on corporate earnings. 

"If you get surprises and disappointments in terms of what the company actually delivers over the next couple of years, that's where you'll make money as a stock pick," Norris said.

The second part of the strategy is being able to hedge market beta, which is the volatility of a stock relative to the market.

To understand the volatility, Norris studies the macro environment to grasp when the market might be more risk-tolerant or more benign. 

The most dangerous time for the portfolio is when the market decides to tolerate much risk, Norris said. Sharp, short bursts of risk-on environments can make it challenging to run a short book as a market hedge; it's difficult to make money in an uncorrelated way simply because beta is delivering the performance rather than alpha, Norris said.

This may present some challenges to the fund in 2021 as many top investment banks and mutual funds are staying overweight on equities and recommending investors move to riskier assets to compensate for low bond yields.

"I don't think I've ever seen a market consensus for next year which is so bullish in that we're told the global economy is gonna recover strongly," Norris said. "That may well be true, but I can see some significant risks to that and I don't think it will be a recovery without some significant bumps on the way."

Norris believes investors should be cautious of the "siren call" to buy riskier stocks such as value stocks, which tend to have higher volatility and perform well in short, sharp spurts but have had relatively poor returns over the last decade.

Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce is one example of those very risky stocks in the market that Norris is shorting.

"Rolls-Royce this year will burn through £4.5 billion," Norris said. "It's raised about £5 billion in new equity and new debt. So the valuation of Rolls-Royce — in terms of its market capitalization, its equity plus its debt — is actually higher now than what it was at the start of the year … I'd argue that the Rolls-Royce share price is now factoring in that this is a better company now than what it was pre-COVID."

Longer-term, there are issues with the fact Rolls-Royce engines are specifically targeting wide-body planes and most of the growth for the airline aerospace industry is in narrow-body planes.

Finding shorts

Norris generally looks for three types of opportunities when shorting:

  • Overvalued companies that could never deliver on investors' expectations.
  • Companies with bad business models in no-hope industries.
  • Fraudulent companies, which ultimately go to zero because their sales profits and cash flow either don't exist or have been syphoned by management and away from shareholders. 

"[Fraudulent companies], I think, are the best shorts because they go to zero," Norris said.

He added: "When short sellers uncover frauds like NMC health care and Wirecard, they are fulfilling a pretty crucial economic and social function, which is to self-regulate the stock market." 

Beyond Rolls-Royce, Norris is secretive on what he is shorting currently but highlights he often looks to continental Europe as corporate governance is worse than in the UK.

"Being more activist in terms of corporate governance, both on the long side and the short side, I think that ultimately, we'll have a fairer stock market with a lower cost of capital, and that will be a benefit to everyone," Norris said.

SEE ALSO: From Wall Street heavyweights to boutique investment firms, we break down what 7 fund managers and market strategists think about Brexit as the 'midnight hour' approaches.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A cleaning expert reveals her 3-step method for cleaning your entire home quickly

These custom Rolls-Royces feature everything from rose gold to thousands of iridescent feathers — see inside

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Rolls Royce Sportive Collection.2

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Some BadStuff happened last year. Even luxury boutique automaker Rolls-Royce acknowledges this. But at least its customers weren't hit so hard that they couldn't still shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars for bespoke designs, which helped keep the automaker's craftspeople employed. Jobs!

The Rolls-Royce Bespoke Collective is a team of craftspeople, designers, and engineers who take a customer's Rolls-Royce a step further and customize it to their exact specifications and creativity, according to a press release. Because of the pandemic, Rolls said that its designers and customers "found themselves confined to the safety of their homes." Very responsible of them.

This, in turn, led to "a change in [the] source of inspiration from travel and its associated items of luxury grandeur, to rich and textural surroundings of the home, architecture and moments of stillness found in nature." 

Same. We'll see how these custom cars turned out in a second, but if were me, my "rich and textural surroundings of the home" would include plastic takeout containers and the crisp whiteness of my KN95 masks. Perfect for a Wraith, in one girl's humble opinion.

Despite the pandemic and economic downturn, though, Rolls-Royce said it actually experienced a "robust increase" of bespoke commissions in 2020 over 2019. While a global crisis grips everyone else, why not stick your money where it matters: in a custom Rolls?

Read on to see some of those custom cars.

SEE ALSO: Driving a $430,000 Rolls-Royce Ghost reminded me that opulence has no limits and neither does my mediocrity

Part of Rolls-Royce's business is creating custom cars for customers willing to pay for the service. On average, the automaker experienced a "robust increase" of bespoke commissions in 2020 over 2019.



This is the Sportive Collection. It's comprised of two Black Badge Dawns and nine Black Badge Wraiths.



The interior has a colored weave that matches the car's exterior color. There are also hand-painted exterior coachlines.



The cars were commissioned for the United Arab Emirates.



The Arctic White and Hotspur Red Phantom is completely red inside, including its trunk.



It's so, so red.



The car was commissioned by a Rolls-Royce collector in Texas.



The inside of the Rolls-Royce Cullinan "Spirit of Russia" Collection has a map of Russia on its Starlight Headliner.



The Dawn Silver Bullet Collection turns the four-seater convertible into a two-seater convertible.



The cars are limited to just 50 examples around the world.



They're all painted in Brewster Silver Paint.



The Dusk in Tokyo collection is made of up a Phantom, Wraith, Dawn, and Cullinan. They're meant to celebrate Tokyo.



The Spirit of Ecstacy is depicted in rose gold.



The fascia clock is made of rose gold.



As are other details.



The illuminated fascia in the Rolls-Royce Ghost uses 152 LEDs and 90,000 laser-etched dots. It twinkles when you look at it.

Review here!



You'll remember the Rolls-Royce Wraith Kryptos Collection.

Source: Insider



It's limited to just 50 examples as well.



There's an in-motion, data-stream inspired pattern on the headliner.



The Spirit of Ecstacy bears the word "Kryptos" in code.



A South African artist Dr. Esther Mahlangu loaned her artistry to the Rolls-Royce Mahlangu Phantom.



It's a one-of-a-kind commission that features contemporary African art.



There are bold, vibrant colors and geometric shapes.



The Rolls-Royce Neon Nights Colour Trilogy includes a Dawn, Wrath, and Cullinan.



The colors are Lime Rock Green, Eagle Rock Red, and Mirabeau Blue.



It's a limited run of the cars. Only four cars of each color will be made.



The green is inspired by a green tree frog from Australia.



The Rolls-Royce Phantom "Iridescent Opulence" has more than 3,000 iridescent tail feathers. Sourced sustainably, of course.



The car was created through a partnership with Nature Squared, a Swiss materials specialist.



The whole thing is supposed to remind you of nature.



From the outside, the Rolls-Royce Steed Phantom Extended looks like a regular Phantom.



But look inside! There's an embroidered horse on the back door.



You'll find a little handpainted coachline detail of the sun and the eight planets of our Solar System on the Rolls-Royce Wraith "Inspired by Earth."



You can see an airbrushed satellite image of the Middle East on the fascia.



The car's hood also a satellite view of the Middle East.



The interior leather is colored to look like the Emirates' desert sand. The blue is supposed to represent the lakes and rivers.



This custom Rolls-Royce Phantom features 3,000 shimmering feathers and a mother-of-pearl clock — see inside

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Rolls Royce Phantom

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You read it and maybe stopped and thought, "3,000 iridescent tail feathers"? In a car? How? Why? Well, here's your closer look at the Rolls-Royce Phantom "Iridescent Opulence."

The car was delivered to Abu Dhabi Motors on Monday. It is the production version of a 2017 design concept from Nature Squared, a Swiss company that incorporates natural materials into interior surfaces, according to a company press release. The buyer wasn't named and neither was the price, but a regular Phantom starts at about $460,000.

The feathers were hand-sewn onto open-pore fabric. The dashboard clock is inlaid with mother of pearl. It is, frankly, quite stunning.

Keep scrolling to see more of the Rolls-Royce Phantom "Iridescent Opulence."

SEE ALSO: These custom Rolls-Royces feature everything from rose gold to thousands of iridescent feathers — see inside

The Rolls-Royce Phantom "Iridescent Opulence" is a customized Phantom that was delivered to Abu Dhabi Motors on February 1.



The car's exterior color is meant to match the brilliance of its interior materials.



It's unclear who the "Iridescent Opulence" was commissioned for, and Rolls-Royce didn't mention a price. But a regular Phantom starts at about $460,000.



In traditional Rolls-Royce fashion, the paint is two-tone.



The blue-green paint complements the silver.



The feather detailing on the coachline appears to be hand painted.



The car was designed by a Swiss company that incorporates natural elements into surfaces called Nature Squared.



Inside, you get your Starlight headliner.



But here on the dash, the team found a bird from which they could sustainably procure more than 3,000 tail feathers.



The feathers were hand-sewn into open pore fabric and designed to emulate a bird's wing.



The dashboard clock is inlaid with mother of pearl.



The Rolls-Royce Phantom "Iridescent Opulence" is being shown at Abu Dhabi Motors. Drop by for a visit if you're in town.




Barclays says buy these 33 beaten-down stocks that are perfectly poised to capitalize on the reopening of the economy in the years ahead

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Barclays Traders NYSE

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Vaccines offer society a route back to normality, and for investors they present an opportunity to buy those stocks that were badly beaten down in the pandemic and stand most to gain as the economy reopens and consumers start leaving their homes more. 

Barclays has taken a look at some of the airline, cruise line and hotel and entertainment stocks, as well as fashion retailers, food and beverages firms, and some attractively priced value names that are still a long way off where they were before the pandemic struck in February last year, although they're comfortably above their recent lows. 

For example, the MSCI European value index has gained 42.95% since the March crash, but it's 14.37% lower year-on-year, compared with a 5% gain in the broader MSCI Europe index, which leaves scope for a significant further recovery as vaccination programs across Europe start to curb virus transmission levels and suppress infection rates.

Several major European economies, including the UK, Germany, France and Spain, still have tough restrictions and lockdowns in place. But successful vaccination will allow activity to return to normal. Barclays has identified 33 stocks across several different sectors, that "offer potential value on a multi-year horizon," the firm said in a note published Wednesday.

Many of these stocks are still showing double-digit percentage losses on where they traded a year ago. But there's a caveat. Many of the longer-term structural implications of the pandemic are unknown, meaning that not all businesses will be able to go back to the "old normal," Barclays said.

Here are the 33 stocks that Barclays believes should gain over the longer term, as vaccinations allow governments to lift restrictions.

Accor

  • Ticker: AC FP
  • Sector: Consumer Discretionary
  • Market cap: €8.1 bln


Burberry

  • Ticker: BRBY LN
  • Sector: Consumer Discretionary
  • Market cap: €8.1 bln


Carnival

  • Ticker: CCL LN
  • Sector: Consumer Discretionary
  • Market cap: €2.5 bln


Compass Group

  • Ticker: CPG LN
  • Sector: Consumer Discretionary
  • Market cap: €29.7 bln


H&M

  • Ticker: HMB SS
  • Sector: Consumer Discretionary
  • Market cap: €26.3 bln


Inditex

  • Ticker: ITX SQ
  • Sector: Consumer Discretionary
  • Market cap: €80.9 bln


Intercontinental Hotels

  • Ticker: IHG LN
  • Sector: Consumer Discretionary
  • Market cap: €10.5 bln


Next

  • Ticker: NXT LN
  • Sector: Consumer Discretionary
  • Market cap: €11.9 bln


Richemont

  • Ticker: CFR SE
  • Sector: Consumer Discretionary
  • Market cap: €42.0 bln


Sodexo

  • Ticker: SW FP
  • Sector: Consumer Discretionary
  • Market cap: €11.1 bln


Swatch Group

  • Ticker: UHR SE
  • Sector: Consumer Discretionary
  • Market cap: €7.2 bln


Whitbread

  • Ticker: WTB LN
  • Sector: Consumer Discretionary
  • Market cap: €7.4 bln


Anheuser-Busch Inbev

  • Ticker: ABI BB
  • Sector: Consumer Staples
  • Market cap: €91.6 bln


Associated British Foods

  • Ticker: ABF LN
  • Sector: Consumer Staples
  • Market cap: €20.5 bln


ADP

  • Ticker: ADP FP
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €10.5 bln


Aena

  • Ticker: AENA SQ
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €20.7 bln


Airbus

  • Ticker: AIR FP
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €20.7.1 bln


Atlantia

  • Ticker: ATL IM
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €13.3 bln


Deutsche Lufthansa

  • Ticker: LHA GY
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €6.3 bln


easyJet

  • Ticker: EZJ LN
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €4.3 bln


Fraport

  • Ticker: FRA GY
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €4.5 bln


IAG

  • Ticker: IAG LN
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €9.0 bln


ISS

  • Ticker: ISS DC
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €2.7 bln


MTU Aero Engines

  • Ticker: MTX GY
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €10.8 bln


Rolls-Royce

  • Ticker: RR LN
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €8.9 bln


Ryanair

  • Ticker: RYA ID
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €17.6 bln


Safran

  • Ticker: SAF FP
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €45.0 bln


Thales

  • Ticker: HO FP
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €16.5 bln


Vinci

  • Ticker: DG FP
  • Sector: Industrials
  • Market cap: €51.4 bln


Amadeus IT

  • Ticker: AMS SQ
  • Sector: Tech
  • Market cap: €25.1 bln


British Land

  • Ticker: BLND LN
  • Sector: Real Estate
  • Market cap: €4.9 bln


Gecina

  • Ticker: GFC FP
  • Sector: Real Estate
  • Market cap: €9.1 bln


Unibail-Rodamco

  • Ticker: URW NA
  • Sector: Real Estate
  • Market cap: €8.4 bln


This Rolls-Royce features a starry ceiling display of the sky on the night its owner was born — see inside

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Rolls-Royce Koa Phantom.

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Rolls-Royce is a company that continually reminds me the sky's the limit as long as you've got the money.

I've seen the automaker customize cars with contemporary African art and literal bird feathers. What I haven't seen is a Rolls-Royce that was inspired by a rocking chair. 

Until now.

This is the Rolls-Royce Koa Wood Phantom Extended — a custom Phantom created for one Jack Boyd Smith Jr. and inspired by a koa-wood rocking chair that's been in the family for years, according to a company press release.

As this was a purely custom job, Rolls-Royce did not reveal how much the Koa Wood Phantom cost. But a regular Phantom starts at $463,350, if that's any indication. Inside, there's actual koa-wood veneer, which was very rare and difficult to come by. It also features a light display showing the night sky on the day Smith was born, because loving yourself is important. Even if sometimes you love yourself a little too much.

Read on to see more.

SEE ALSO: Driving a $430,000 Rolls-Royce Ghost reminded me that opulence has no limits and neither does my mediocrity

This is the Rolls-Royce Koa Wood Phantom Extended.



From the outside, it looks like a dark blue Phantom.



But it is a meticulously customized one-off for a client named Jack Boyd Smith Jr.



His initials are visible on the driver's door.



His wife Laura's initials can be found on the passenger door.



The Phantom wears a coat of "Packard Blue" exterior paint.



It was color-matched the 1934 Packard Twelve Coupe from Smith's personal collection.



But the Koa Phantom is named as such because it was inspired by a beloved koa-wood rocking chair that the Smiths have had in their home for many years.



This is that chair.



The Smiths have always been very taken with koa wood, since they've spent so much time in Maui, Hawaii.



Koa trees only grow in Hawaii. They are protected on a state and national level.



The only way to get it is by harvesting it from private growers.



The Smiths waited three years for the Rolls-Royce Wood Specialist to find the perfect log of koa wood.



The specialist "negotiated with a supplier for a highly prized log from his own, personal collection."

Source: Rolls-Royce



Smith really wanted to capture the warmth of koa-wood in his car.



The log that the specialist found had a particularly beautiful textural finish.



The dash-mounted clock is a staple in nearly all modern Rolls-Royces.



Why, yes, there is a champagne fridge.



Why, yes, it comes with a crystal decanter.



And there is a pair of initialed champagne flutes.



The rest of the wood went toward creating this picnic hamper.



It's made from koa wood, saddle leather, and stainless steel.



The 12-piece stainless steel cutlery set was hand-made in England.



The set also includes hand-made wine glasses and decanters from the Hungarian Ajka Crystal factory.



A personalized plate reminds you who this car was built for.



The Smiths' names can also be found in the personalized treadplates.



The Starlight Headliner, with 1,420 fiber-optic lights, shows the constellation of the sky above Cleveland, Ohio, on the day Smith was born.



The Koa Phantom marks the fifth Rolls-Royce to become part of The JBS Collection of Jack Boyd Smith Jr. in Elkhart, Indiana.



The Koa Phantom was a custom job, so there was no pricing announcement.



A regular 2021 Phantom starts at $463,350, though, so expect the price to have only gone up from there.

Source: Car and Driver



Rolls-Royce's new custom cars add a glowing pulsar star to the ceiling of the $500,000 Phantom — see inside

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Rolls Royce Tempus Collection Front

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Just like the rest of us, Rolls-Royce has the passing of time on the brain. But instead of suffering existential dread like the mere mortals of this world, the automaker instead devoted itself to creating a line of time-themed Phantom models.

It's called the Phantom Tempus Collection, according to the press release, and each of the 20 cars in the collection will have bespoke paint, a redesigned fiber-optic headliner, and an accompanying hand-painted champagne chest. Rolls-Royce didn't say how much each car costs, but the regular Phantom starts at $463,000.

If you're interested in obtaining a piece of the Tempus Collection for yourself, tough. All 20 cars are already spoken for.

But you can keep reading to see all the intricate details.

SEE ALSO: Driving a $430,000 Rolls-Royce Ghost reminded me that opulence has no limits and neither does my mediocrity Alanis King Nov 10, 2020, 9:27 AM

Rolls-Royce's new Phantom Tempus Collection is inspired by the concept of "time, astronomical phenomena, and the infinite reaches of the universe."

"As we all know, Time never stands still, waits for no one. Hence, we manage it, guard it, account for it, weigh and measure it to its smallest fraction. With Phantom Tempus, we have created a space in which those strictures no longer apply – as illustrated by the deliberate absence of a clock. Rolls-Royce clients are not bound by Time; the outside world with all its pressures and demands are forgotten," said Torsten Müller-Ötvös, Rolls-Royce's chief executive.

Source: Rolls-Royce



All the Phantoms in the collection are painted Kairos Blue, which has blue mica flakes that glitter.

It was "created to embody the darkness and mystery of space,"according to Rolls-Royce.



The interior features the "Frozen Flow of Time" artwork, which was created from a single piece of billet aluminum and milled to create 100 "individually contoured columns."



Each of those aluminum columns is hand-polished and black-anodized, so it's extra reflective.

The entire collection focuses on the pulsar, an astronomical phenomenon that the automaker describes as, "unknown until 1967 and found only in the deepest reaches of space (the nearest yet discovered is 280 light years, or 1,680 trillion miles, from Earth). These very dense, white-hot stars emit electromagnetic radiation in extremely regular pulses, making them some of the most accurate clocks in the universe."



The columns represent "the 100-million-year period of a rotational spin of a pulsar star," according to Rolls-Royce.



The insides of the doors have a "swirling, twisting pattern of stars" that was created by illuminated and perforated leather.



Customers can engrave the Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament with a significant date or location.

Rolls-Royce provides some examples: "A marriage, the birth of a child, or even a major business success."



The centerpiece of the collection, however, is the headliner.



It's called the Pulsar Headliner, which blends the existing fiber-optic lighting with embroidery.



Buyers also get a hand-painted champagne chest that includes champagne- and caviar-chilling thermal flasks, four crystal flutes, and a mother-of-pearl caviar spoon.



Rolls-Royce is only making 20 examples of the Phantom Tempus Collection. The company didn't name a price, but the regular Phantom starts at $463,000.



They've all sold out already.



Why electric planes haven't taken off yet

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Following is a transcript of the video.

Narrator: What could a future with electric planes look like? $25 tickets, quieter airports, or even shorter runways. Companies have been betting on battery-powered planes for this cleaner future. But even though electric planes have been around since the 1970s, they haven't really taken off. So, what's keeping them grounded?

In the late 1800s, two French army officers experimented with electricity to propel an airship, but they ran into problems when the battery just couldn't hold enough energy. This would become a recurring problem for the next 100 years.

When nickel-cadmium batteries were invented, the first flight with an electric motor took off, but it only lasted less than 15 minutes.

Then, in the 1980s, lithium-ion batteries were invented. They could store more power than ever before, leading to planes like the Solar Impulse 2. Starting in 2015, the solar-powered aircraft spent 16 months flying around the world, except it flew at an average speed of 28 to 34 mph.

Solar Impulse 2 is part of a movement in recent years to develop alternative energies, especially when people and governments started realizing just how bad flying was for the environment. The aviation industry emitted about 1 billion tons CO2 in 2019. That's about 2.5% of global emissions. That might not sound like a lot, but it's almost as much as the entire continent of South America emits in a year.

Kevin Noertker: We need to make changes to the industry, and electrification is one of the big trends which will hopefully reduce that burden.

Narrator: Electric planes have been on people's mind for a while, but two big problems are keeping electric grounded. First, the technology's not quite ready.

When you're trying to get an electric plane off the ground, you want a battery that packs a lot of punch in a little package, but...

Carolina Anderson: Batteries are not as efficient as gas, and they're probably not gonna be for a while.

Narrator: A battery's efficiency, or ability to hold power, is measured in specific energy. Right now, even the best batteries have a specific energy of only 250 watt-hours per kilogram, but we have to get closer to 800 to really start flying, and that is still nothing compared to jet fuel's specific energy, which is nearly 12,000 watt-hours per kilogram.

Think about it like those computers from the '80s. They were huge, but way less powerful than the sleek ones we have today. Right now, batteries are like those '80s computers. They're not as powerful as they need to be, and they're not just big, they're also heavy.

So if you want to add more power to a plane, you need to get a bigger battery, and to get that plane airborne despite the weight, you'll need even bigger battery that's more powerful, but that means more weight. And then you'll need an even bigger battery to offset that weight. Oh, you get the point.

But even if engineers design a plane around the shortfalls in battery tech, they have to take on the industry's second hurdle, certification. In the US, that means getting permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to test and fly an electric plane. Companies have to prove every inch of their aircraft is safe, passing a series of tests, one of which is to make sure the battery cells won't catch fire.

Roei Ganzarski: If something goes wrong, you can't stop. You can't pull to the side of the road. There's only one place for that airplane to go. And so the regulatory stringency is much higher, the requirements for reliability, redundancy, and safety are much higher for a good reason. You have no alternate.

Narrator: The FAA amended its rules in 2016 to allow electric propulsion systems in airplanes built for up to 19 passengers. The real problem, though, is that certification, even with these amendments, takes years, so companies have gotten creative. They've started to retrofit old planes to get certified quicker.

Ganzarski: You're taking out the entire old, gas-guzzling, emission-creating engine and its fuel system, and replacing that space and weight with an electric propulsion system.

Narrator: Retrofitting has happened in phases. The first phase was from Slovenian company Pipistrel. It created the world's first all-electric two-seater plane back in 2007 by putting an electric engine in a glider.

Tine Tomažič: Gliders are safe to fly by definition, even without a functioning engine, so we were able to experiment without putting anybody at risk or do harm to anyone.

Narrator: Today, those planes are used for pilot training.

The second phase: a hybrid. Los Angeles company Ampaire replaced one of the two engines in a 1973 Cessna with an electric one. Ampaire hopes to get its new plane, the Electric Eel, certified for commercial flights by 2021.

And, finally, over in Vancouver, electric-motor manufacturer MagniX and Vancouver-based airline Harbour Air flew a retrofitted 62-year-old plane. A 15-minute test flight in December 2019 made it the world's first all-electric commercial plane to fly. It proved that electric could actually take off. The two companies' goal is now to electrify the rest of Harbour Air's fleet of more than 40 seaplanes and have it certified by the end of 2021.

So, retrofitting seems perfect. The problem, though, is that it limits you to what the plane structure is already built for, so if the original motor is, say, 1,000 pounds, and you remove it, then...

Ganzarski: I only have 1,000 pounds to put back in, right? I can't make the total package heavier.

Narrator: Electric motors are smaller and lighter than gas ones, but remember, those batteries are heavy.

Ganzarski: So you lose range because batteries, for the same amount of power, are so much heavier than fuel.

Narrator: So while Harbour Air and MagniX figured out the balance of weight in their plane, the range took a hit. Their electric plane can go over 100 miles, a little less than the distance from Seattle to Vancouver, but for electric planes to be successful long-term, they'll have to go farther.

Israeli company Eviation might have a solution. Instead of retrofitting an old plane, its engineers built a plane from scratch. The nine-seater plane, Alice, was designed around the battery to reduce weight.

Omer Bar-Yohay: That battery's literally all over the place. It's under the floor, it's in the wings, it's the fuselage in different locations.

Narrator: Alice, in theory, could fly up to 650 miles, roughly a flight from Las Vegas to Denver, but because it was built from the ground up, getting her certified is taking longer.

Bar-Yohay: We're very confident that we will be testing the plane in flight early 2020 and believe that from that point on the certification process will take about two years.

Narrator: Each electric plane in development is different, but they all have one thing in common: they're going after flights under 500 miles. And while it may not seem like an impressive distance, these short-range electric planes could solve a major problem in travel.

In 2018, a little less than half of all air tickets sold globally were for flights under 500 miles, but instead of using small, efficient planes designed for these shorter routes, we often use expensive airliners built to fly thousands of miles. These planes are most efficient if they're able to cruise for a long period of time, but on a flight that's 50 minutes, these planes go up, and they come right back down. Currently, a 109-mile flight from Los Angeles to San Diego emits about 110 pounds of CO2.

Bar-Yohay: For a technical-savvy person, that's an insanity, because we're using the wrong tools for the job.

Narrator: In the last four decades, flying regional with commercial jets got so expensive for airlines in the US, Europe, and Australia that they began stopping service to regional airports. Today, of the 20,000 FAA-approved runways in the US, only 2.5% are currently active.

The regional airports left are running at a loss or even going bankrupt, but electric planes could be a fix, and there's already an infrastructure for them. Omer says 11,000 of those 20,000 US runways could support an electric plane, which is a lot cheaper to operate. Alice could save about $800 per flight hour compared to a normal turboprop plane.

Noertker: It's a tenfold increase in the number of potential destinations, all the while not having the significant burdens on the communities of noise and pollution.

Narrator: As for the distant future, electric aviation could come in all kinds of forms. Uber is already working on an electrical vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, or eVTOL, that could pick you up right at your house and fly you to an airport. Even big players like Airbus, Boeing, and Rolls-Royce are betting on this future.

Tomažič: We set out on a journey that's akin to crawling, walking, running, leaping. We're now in the phase of walking. The running part will be the bigger electric airplanes flying longer distances, and the big leaps, coming in a decade or so, will be the eVTOL segment, which is vertical takeoff and landing electric-powered machines that effectively take off and land where we want them, bringing the airports to people.

Narrator: Everyone we talked to said that's still about 15 years off, and now that an electric plane has actually proven successful, those in the industry are hopeful that investment into battery development will start rolling in. Because to break out of that infinite power and weight loop we were talking about, we're gonna need more efficient batteries for electric planes to really take off.

Bar-Yohay: The question is, when does it make economic sense and who has the many billions it will take to bring a product like this to market in 15 years' time? So, is it the future? Absolutely.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published in March 2020.

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Rolls-Royce is reinventing its classic luxury brand — and its first-ever $330,000 SUV is leading the shift

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Rolls-Royce Cullinan

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Rolls-Royce just set a record. In the first quarter, the British luxury carmaker sold 1,380 vehicles, the most ever in the brand's 116-year history.

Rolls had already set an annual record for sales back in 2019 when it delivered 5,152 vehicles, but that total fell to 3,756 in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the auto industry. The greatly improved trajectory at the start of 2021 suggests that the brand, owned by the BMW Group, could be on a record-breaking pace for 2021.

Its first SUV, the Cullinan, is helping to drive the results. The $330,000 — to start — "super sport utility vehicle," as Rolls calls it, debuted in 2018 with a name derived from the largest uncut diamond ever discovered and has remade the marque's image.  While not as stuffy as it once was, Rolls still didn't seem quite as hip as its rivals before the Cullinan. Just look at Bentley, whose Bentayga ute arrived in 2015.

Now, Rolls says Cullinan is the fastest-selling new vehicle it has ever launched. And after the pandemic market swoon of 2020, it's reaping rewards for taking the risk of potentially throwing off its sedan- and coupe-dominated brand to offer an SUV with a silvery Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament.

"Cullinan has been a game-changer for us, bringing a whole new level of diversity to the Rolls-Royce family," Martin Fritsches, CEO of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Americas, told Insider.

Fritsches said every Cullinan Rolls can make at its Goodwood factory in England is spoken for through at least the third quarter. It's also a different kind of Rolls-Royce, a conscious departure from the incredibly upscale saloons long favored by celebrities and rock stars.

"Cullinan has brought in a younger audience, especially families," Fritsches said. "They want to use their Rolls-Royce every day and take it everywhere."

The Cullinan has opened up the brand to new buyers

The automotive world has been conquered by SUVs in the past few years, with mass-market models displacing traditional sedans and, at the more stratospheric price levels, new offerings coming from Maserati, Bentley, Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, and Jaguar Land Rover. In the most unlikely turn of events, Ferrari intends to join the trend with its forthcoming Purosangue SUV.

The original ultra-luxury SUV was probably the Porsche Cayenne, which debuted in 2003. Porsche was rivaled by Mercedes, BMW, and Audi for a number of years before brands that are better known for high-performance sports cars got into the fray. But Bentley's Bentayga and the Rolls-Royce Cullinan have set the highest bar.

"There's nothing more classic than a Rolls Royce, but there's also no denying that the brand and its fleet of extravagant passenger cars sell to an extremely limited audience," Jessica Caldwell, Executive Director of Insights at Edmunds, told Insider.

"With the introduction of the Cullinan, Rolls Royce has opened itself up to a broader buyer base and is enjoying success similar to other exotic brands who have embraced the SUV craze," she added. "By offering the utility body style, Cullinan has the ability to capture buyers who are likely younger and looking for the pinnacle of luxury in an SUV instead of the traditional passenger car."

Of course, it isn't all about Cullinan for Rolls. The brand also launched the second generation of its Ghost four-door last year. The company said its sales also contributed healthily to the record first-quarter total and encouraged it to think the big dip of 2020 could be a distant memory.

"We are optimistic about 2021," Fritsches said.

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NOW WATCH: What it's like inside Rolls-Royce's $410,000 luxury SUV





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