The Rolls‑Royce Boat Tail is a luxury yacht for the road

Far and away, the most extravagantly beautiful Rolls-Royce of the modern era, the Boat Tail is everything a coachbuilt Rolls-Royce should be: unapologetically big, elegant, hand-crafted and bespoke. But it’s not unique: the three customers liked the result so much they have commissioned one each. 

The blue car you see here is the first of three Boat Tails in what Rolls-Royce is hailing as a return to its coachbuilding roots, following a toe in the water (pun intended) with the one-off Sweptail of 2017.

“Rolls-Royce Boat Tail forges a pivotal moment in our marque’s history and in the contemporary luxury landscape,” RR chief executive Torsten Müller-Ötvös tells us. “Rolls-Royce Coachbuild is a return to the very roots of our brand. It represents an opportunity for the select few to participate in the creation of utterly unique and truly personal commissions of future historical significance.” 

It is not known who the “select few” are, or indeed what their nautical riff on the best car in the world cost, and RR definitely isn’t saying. But we do know the car you see here was commissioned by “a globally successful couple” who already own Rolls-Royces including a 1932 Rolls Boat Tail which they restored. They are into J-class yachts but also Bovet timepieces and grand cru champagnes and elements of all these things have been incorporated into the car. 

The other two yet-to-be-built Boat Tails promise to be equally personalised to the owners’ likes and whims. What the trio share is the same 5.8m long two-door convertible body with a removable hardtop. 

Those tapering, yacht-like lines, distinctly un-Rolls-Royce like, are rendered in hand-beaten aluminium, stretched over an aluminium spaceframe architecture. There is a donor car involved somewhere in here but what it is Rolls isn’t saying, and so much has changed it’s probably academic anyway. It does say that each Boat Tail has more than 1800 newly designed parts in it.

Beyond the shared body design and powertrain pretty much anything goes and in this first example, it definitely goes with the sound of a popping champagne cork.

The commission the “globally successful couple” came up with was “purposefully self-indulgent” according to Rolls-Royce. It was envisioned as a joyful, celebratory car to enjoy with their family. They didn’t hold back.

Cocktail cabinet in your limousine a bit old hat? You need a “hosting suite”. That rear deck, beautiful in grey and black Caleidolegno veneer inlaid with stainless steel, is huge for a reason. Concealed within is this car’s pièce de résistance. 

Push a button and the deck opens up like butterfly wings, revealing what is surely the ultimate picnic hamper: one side is dedicated to aperitifs, the other side food. It is all refrigerated, as is the dedicated champagne storage which can rapid-chill a bottle of bubbly down to the owner’s preferred 6deg C. Everything you need for the Rolls-Royce of picnics is included, down to cutlery engraved with the car’s name.

As part of the hosting suite’s complex mechanical opening-up routine, twin cocktail tables swing out while included as well are twin stools for somewhere to sit. Sun too strong? A telescopic parasol rises from the centre of the rear deck to provide shade. 

Not everyone would want such pure hedonism – though we can’t think why not – but then that’s the whole coachbuilt point. One thing for sure, the Boat Tail doesn’t need its champagne store to impress: the design and imposing size do that. 

The yacht influences are easy to pick up on: the wood and stainless steel, the veneered “transom” and a purity of line in profile that suggests slender racing hull as much as car. RR says this profile evokes a motor launch rising up out of the water under power, and you can see what they mean.

There are two things about this design which we love and fly in the face of Rolls-Royce tradition: one is the pantheon grille incorporated into the front-end design instead of being the standalone monolith we are used to. The second is the rear lights. RR rear lights are always chunky vertical shapes, in complete contrast to these slimly elegant horizontal strips.

The detachable hard-top if anything adds to the elegance, with vestigial flying buttresses sloping down to that curvy rump in a very graceful fashion. In the press pack’s single reference to anything remotely practical, the car is said to come with a tonneau in case it rains when you have left the hard-top at home. You wouldn’t want to get the equally bespoke interior, complete with matching his-‘n-hers Bovet timepieces, wet after all…

The Boat Tail has been created to be driven, says Rolls, just in case you were wondering. We can assume there are large and powerful mechanical components under the skin – a twin-turbo V12 at the very least – but Rolls feels itself under no obligation to confirm it. Power is undoubtedly “sufficient”. 

The Boat Tail is fully homologated and road-legal and has gone through the same dynamic testing as all other Rolls-Royces – obviously with the addition of high-speed testing to ensure your picnic doesn’t get too shaken up.

Truly coachbuilt cars of the past have given us many of the greatest cars ever made – and by any reckoning the Boat Tail appears a triumphant return to the art form, and what Rolls calls “a counterpoint to industrialised luxury”. And it’s here to stay too, as Torsten Müller-Ötvös tells us. “We are proud to unveil the Boat Tail to the world, and with it, the confirmation of coachbuilding as a permanent fixture within our future portfolio.”

So get your wildest Rolls-Royce fantasies – and your chequebook – at the ready…