Don’t ever tell me that Rolls-Royce isn’t paying fierce attention to the entire scope of humanity and carefully selecting the absolute finest bits, like an ornithologist extracting the finest rat ribs from an owl pellet. If you even suggest such a thing, I’ll have my valet slap you with a fresh slab of Nova Scotia salmon. I mean it.
I say this because Rolls-Royce has developed a car that captures the essence of one of humanity’s greatest triumphs: a really high dude at a party who just learned what pulsars were by binge-watching Cosmos and now wants to tell you all about it, forever.
The car is the Rolls-Royce Phantom Tempus, and it’s “the marque’s pinnacle Phantom limousine,” which means ha ha ha no you can’t fucking afford it, ever, please, come on, and even if somehow you think you can, too fucking bad, they only made 20 of them and some wildly wealthy deigh-baggës have already snatched them all up.
Here, you can watch and learn all about it in Roll’s little planetarium show here:
Mmm, yes, pulsars, the stars with such precision that they must have been built by Rolls-Royce stellar craftsdeities.
The aesthetic of the car seems to be like someone took the general gist of the Trapper Keeper Space Game, the pothead staple movie What the Bleep Do We Know, blended them together and then sprayed out the resulting pulpy muck all the fuck over a Rolls-Royce Phantom.
If you think I’m being too harsh, listen to this shit from the Rolls press release:
It is thus the perfect moment for Phantom Tempus Collection – a magnificent incarnation of our pinnacle product, inspired by a mysterious celestial phenomenon and Time, which Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds in human history, defined as a persistent illusion.
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.
Ha ha ha oh god who the fuck are they kidding with this? “Rolls-Royce clients are not bound by Time!” Wow. Oh, that’s amazing. That may be the most pretentious justification for a “clock delete” package I’ve ever seen.
The place where the clock would have been on this dash, if Rolls-Royce’s buyers needed to know about anything as miserably mundane as “time,” is composed of an aluminum slab described as
“Phantom’s Gallery features 100 individual columns, milled from a single billet of black-anodised and hand-polished aluminium.”
...and sure, it’s cool-looking, but would a mass-produced injection-molded polycarbonate one look as cool? Probably. Also, when did we start calling the panel in the dashboard a “gallery?”
Just take a moment and imagine the pain of being dragged into this car at a swanky party and instructed to look at the dash to see what’s missing, and then the owner telling you “the clock!” and then not shutting up for a solid 20 minutes about how time is an illusion and on and on until you just wish the ketamine would kick in, already.
Inside, Rolls takes its star-studded fiber-optic headliner trick and just goes galactic ham with it all over the car, spraying little beads of white starlight over every surface some highly skilled worker hasn’t laid a sheepskin dropcloth over.
Speaking of the headliner, Rolls has gone full carnival airbrush art and now has nebulae and shit purpily embroidered on the ceiling to go with all the starlight:
Here’s another view, from the rear, where you’ll be driven about:
Sure, it’s fun and all, but, really, aren’t we getting dangerously close to Vegas Party Limo interiors here? Here, let’s compare:
Yeah, we’re definitely in the same category of galactic trippy interiors here.
The exterior is pretty much the same as any Phantom, but includes a new paint color with mica chips.
Rolls, of course, reminds us of the deeper meaning behind the paint:
The exterior of the Phantom Tempus Collection is presented in a new Bespoke paint finish, Kairos Blue, created to embody the darkness and mystery of space. The paint incorporates jewel-like blue mica flakes, which glitter and glint as they catch the light, representing the stars. This effect is highlighted by black exterior detailing.
So, metallic navy blue.
They’ll also inscribe the Spirit of Ecstasy flying lady with a date and location of your choice (where and when you buried all those kruggerands, the place and time behind the shower at camp where Keith explained how to wank, etc.)
As one more little treat for the 20 loaded whoevers buying these, Rolls is throwing in a super-fancy space-themed cooler for your tall boys or Yoo-Hoos. Again, Rolls-Royce has a lot to say about this booze chiller:
As a finishing flourish, a unique accessory has been developed to accompany the Collection. Based on the widely acclaimed Rolls-Royce Champagne Chest, the Tempus Champagne Chest incorporates a distinctive element of the Collection. A pulsar artwork is hand-painted onto the table, below which, the perfectly appointed chest houses thermal flasks for chilling both champagne and caviar, four hand-blown crystal champagne flutes arranged to evoke the cylinders of a V12 engine and a fine mother-of-pearl caviar spoon.
Wait wait wait. They say the four champagne flutes are “arranged to evoke the cylinders of a V12 engine,” but there’s just four, so, really, let’s be honest Rolls-Royce, this evokes the cylinders of a V4 engine. You know, like in a Ford Taunus or an old Soviet Zaporozets. Maybe an old Saab.
You can’t say that four “evokes” 12, because, come on, you’re going on and on about your love of science and astronomy here and now you want to just pretend math isn’t a thing?
Fuuuuuuuck ooooffffff.
Yeah, so, there you go. Rolls-Royce got super into astronomy and astrophysics and the big fascinating questions, and as a result it stuck a bunch more lights and purple space murals in a car and sold it for a shitload of money to 20 people.
Another triumph, fellas!