Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has announced a new facet of the ultra-luxury marque’s personality, a “dark and edgy” lifestyle statement called Black Badge.
A permanent new sub-brand, Black Badge was unveiled earlier this year at the Geneva Motor Show and transforms the character of both the Ghost and Wraith. “The new sub-brand is expected to appeal to those people who are elusive and defiant, the risk takers and disruptors who break the rules and laugh in the face of convention,” according to a statement.
The Black Badge will be available to order in mid-May from Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Doha, the sole authorised dealership for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars in Qatar, and is expected to arrive by August.
Brett Soso, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars regional director for Middle East, Africa, Central Asia & South America, said: “Following the launch of Wraith in 2013, many of our new customers have gravitated towards the revitalised Rolls-Royce Motor Cars as the brand most capable of encapsulating their truly individual lifestyles. Through the introduction of Black Badge, we are able to further satisfy the demands of these new customers for a more dark and assertive Ghost and Wraith.”
New material accents and tonalities are combined to accommodate the tastes of those fast-moving customers who adopt a strident approach to life’s finer challenges, the statement notes. “With this manifesto as their departure point, Rolls-Royce designers, engineers and craftspeople set to work transforming Ghost and Wraith in subtly different ways. Their intent was to deliver darker, more assertive and more focused Black Badge alter egos that differ from each other as much as they do from their siblings. The result is Ghost Black Badge and Wraith Black Badge. Black Badge is known as the ultimate in pure luxury style and engineering substance.”
Giles Taylor, director of design at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, said: “The Black Badge spirit manifests itself through a series of carefully considered design elements, which together express a darker luxury sophistication.”
Black Badge will bring the colour black to new levels of intensity. The multiple layers of paint and lacquer that go into creating Black Badge Black are repeatedly hand-polished and the result is the “deepest, darkest and most intense black ever seen on a production car surface”.
The centrepiece of the Black Badge cabin is the aerospace-grade aluminium-threaded carbon fibre composite surfacing – material often seen on the surfaces of stealth aircraft. This futuristic material has been reinterpreted at Goodwood to “become the world’s most innovative new super-luxury material”, the statement adds.