The $31 Million Rolls-Royce Arcadia Droptail Is World’s Most Expensive New Car
The record-setting, yacht-like roadster was commissioned for an unnamed client.
The Rolls-Royce Droptails from the marque’s custom Coachbuild division are truly in a class of their own, thanks to lavish design elements and exorbitant price tags in the tens of millions.
The first of these four rolling automotive artworks, La Rose Noire, set the record for the world’s most expensive new car at $30 million in 2023. The otherworldly ride featured positively astounding bespoke details, including its own Champagne vintage and a dash-mounted Audemars Piguet Royal Oak concept that can be removed and worn.
The price of the second Droptail, Amethyst, wasn’t revealed, but its form was no less stunning, with an aerodynamic deck featuring the world’s only downforce-producing raw wood surface and a Vacheron Constantin tourbillon that, like La Rose Noire’s Royal Oak, can be detached from the dash and worn.
Rolls-Royce has seemingly done the impossible in one-upping the first two Droptails with the third version, named Arcadia. Boasting a reported price tag of $31 million paid for by its anonymous owner who received it at a private function in Singapore, it has usurped the La Rose Noire as the world’s most expensive new car.
“The significance of Rolls-Royce Arcadia Droptail lies in its subtlety,” said Alex Innes, Head of Coachbuild Design, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. “It is a projection of an individual who values clarity and precision in all areas of their life—from their passion for fine cuisine, their highly curated personal and professional spaces and affinity with contemporary design.”
“This motor car is one of the most faithful expressions of an individual’s personal style and sensibilities we have ever created within the Coachbuild department. In capturing their spirit, we reveal a unique appreciation for simplicity, serenity and beautifully restrained elegance—one that was a privilege for me to have been a part of.”
Named after the ancient Greek mythological region known as “Heaven on Earth,” the roadster is presented in a duotone color scheme—the main body’s coat is a white paint infused with aluminum and glass particles, its carbon fiber lower sections are painted in a bespoke silver shade, and the 22-inch wheels and grille’s kinked vertical vane pieces are fully mirror-polished.
Wood development was central to the vision of the client, who insisted that Arcadia stay as true to its earliest 2019 conception as a hand-drawn sketch. Santos Straight Grain was ultimately chosen, which is particularly vulnerable to tearing under machining.
The yacht-like wooden rear deck, comprised of 76 hand-applied pieces, is laid at a perfect 55-degree angle. And given that the car will be driven internationally in tropical climates, Rolls-Royce spent over 1,000 hours just testing the wood’s lacquer before settling on a single protective coat that will never need to be reapplied.
The inside features a version of the exterior’s bespoke white hue and a contrasting tan color designed to complement the Santos Straight Grain wood that also makes up Arcadia’s 40-piece shawl panel—the longest continuous wood section ever featured in a Rolls-Royce. Each piece was digitally mapped using CAD tools and laid, like the rear deck, at a perfect 55-degree angle.
The same wood also houses Rolls’ most complex clock face, assembled in the dash over five months and developed over two years. The timepiece incorporates a geometric guilloche pattern in raw metal with 119 facets—a nod to Rolls-Royce’s 119th anniversary in 2023, when the car was first unveiled for the client.
Its hands and indices are partly polished, partly brushed and 0.1mm thick—Rolls-Royce claims that it held this particular timepiece was held to higher standards than those of even the world’s finest watchmakers. The clock’s guilloche pattern is also referenced in the instrument dials.
Though Arcadia has set the bar extremely high, don’t be surprised if Rolls-Royce somehow creates something even more magnificent for the fourth and final Coachbuild Droptail commission.