Rolls Royce has gone all Sistine Chapel with the next generation Ghost, which set to be officially revealed on September 1st. Rolls Royce wanted to whet the appetite of its considerably wealthy client base by revealing the first bespoke feature for the upcoming Ghost. The illuminated fascia (referred to as “dashboard” to the plebs) reflects the company’s push into a minimal post opulent philosophy. Which means you still have to be rich to buy a Rolls Royce. Considerably. The new feature was developed over two years and took 10000 collective hours to develop (10000 hours is equivalent to 1.1 years). The remainder of the time was spent playing Fortnite Battle Royale. Located on the passenger side of the dashboard, the Illuminated Fascia is designed to create an ethereal glowing Ghost nameplate which is surrounded by more than 850 stars.

The constellation and wordmark are completely invisible when the car is not in operation. This world-first Bespoke innovation subtly echoes Starlight Headliner, which has become as much a part of Rolls-Royce iconography as the Spirit of Ecstasy, Pantheon Grille and ‘Double R’ monogram.

The illumination itself is achieved by the use of 152 LEDs mounted above and beneath the fascia, which are meticulously colour matched to the cabin’s clock and instrument dial lighting. To ensure that the Ghost graphic is lit evenly, a 2 millimetre-thick light guide is used, featuring more than 90,000 laser-etched dots across the surface.

This not only disperses the light evenly but creates a twinkling effect as the eyes moves across the fascia, echoing the subtle twinkle of Starlight Headliner. Extensive engineering work was undertaken to ensure that Illuminated Fascia was completely invisible while not operational. To achieve this, three layers of composite materials are used. 

The first is a Piano Black substrate, which is laser etched to remove the black colouring and allow light to shine through the Ghost wordmark and star cluster. This is then overlaid with a layer of dark tinted lacquer, hiding the lettering when not in use.

Finally, the fascia is sealed with a layer of subtly tinted lacquer before being hand polished to achieve a perfectly uniform 0.5mm thick, high-gloss finish, matching other high gloss accents incorporated into the Sistine Chapel of luxury interiors.