Want your Rolls Royce to match your pet Labrador? Anything is possible in luxury car customization

By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN

(CNN) — To get to Rolls Royce’s New York “Private Office,” a VIP design studio for bespoke projects, a customer must make their way to an unmarked building in lower Manhattan. Then they’ll take the elevator to the 8th floor, possible only through key card access by an attendant. There, they’ll discover a nicely appointed space with a kitchenette, a high-end sound system with stacks of vinyl records, a balcony, and a view toward the Hudson River.

The customers who enter here — by appointment only — know Rolls-Royce well. They’re among the ultraluxury automaker’s best customers. They come to discuss just how they want their cars: the colors — literally any color — the leathers, the woodwork rendition of their dog, the carved landscape with a gold river.

“This is real gold that’s painted with a brush after carving it out,” explained Cara Vitry, a designer for Rolls-Royce’s bespoke cars, as she traced the course of the miniature golden watercourse on a piece of dark wood with her finger.

This is one part of a growing industry trend catering to those who can have nearly anything they want in their cars. This sort of extreme customization has existed as long as cars have, but growing global wealth is bringing it into more automakers in more places, not just Rolls-Royce.

For these customers, there are no option packages, no boxes to check. There are in-house designers like Vitry to help guide grand ideas toward genuinely beautiful creations.

In many of these cases, buying a car becomes like commissioning artwork, said Vitry. Take the Spectre Bailey, for instance: someone wanted their electric Rolls-Royce coupé to capture the spirit and personality of their Labrador-Golden Retriever mix. Tucked into a small break in the pinstripes along each side of the tan-colored car is a hand-painted reproduction of Bailey’s paw print. Inside, there’s a wood veneer portrait of Bailey mounted between the two back seats.

Bailey’s marquetry portrait took more than 4 months to make, using 180 different pieces of veneer, according to Rolls-Royce. With more customers requesting this sort of thing, time has become an issue. So, Rolls-Royce is expanding its Goodwood factory in the UK, not to build more cars but to allow more time on each one.

Aston Martin also has its own customization studio in Manhattan, but this one makes no attempt to be coy. The space, called Q New York, sits on Park Avenue. There’s an Aston Martin sign on it, and there’s always an Aston Martin car parked behind its big windows. The little shop’s name comes from the quartermaster character, Q, who provides the gadgets and, more to the point, Aston Martin cars for James Bond in the famous movies.

Inside, there’s a room that can’t be seen from the street, where customers come to sit down with Aston Martin designers to discuss what they want on their particular cars.

It’s not just about making their car unique, insisted Aston Martin’s chief creative officer Marek Reichman. Anyone can do that without even trying. With the British automaker’s “standard” selection of interior and exterior colors, contrast stitching, trim materials and wheels, he estimates the various possible combinations come to hundreds of millions.

When people want to go beyond this, it’s because they want a story, not just a car. One buyer commissioned his 2025 Vanquish as a tribute to a late uncle, who owned a classic Aston Martin DB6. The new car, christened “The Role Model,” isn’t flashy. Painted a pale metallic green, it has subtle Union Jack flag designs incorporated into its side vent openings. The interior is tan and white with the car’s silhouette in the ceiling. Branded in the sunshade is the phrase, “Your dog is welcome… but you may not be,” a sly greeting taken from a sign in a favorite pub.

Cars like this are outrageously expensive, highly profitable, and they cater to a growing market. There are more than half a million so-called “ultra-high net worth individuals” in the world today, according to Altrata, a firm that tracks the population and habits of the very wealthy. That population is expected to increase by more than 30% by 2030.

Before 2021, Rolls-Royce never had a car costing more than $1 million commissioned for a US customer. That would be roughly twice the base price of the company’s most expensive factory model, the Phantom. Rolls-Royce delivered several cars in the US last year costing that much or more, according to a spokesperson. Almost all of these were factory models, with more than $500,000 worth of additions and customization work. A few, however, may have been models like the Boat Tail, entirely handcrafted creations costing many millions of dollars.

Given the market potential, perhaps it’s unsurprising that automakers that generally cater to the merely rich are chasing more ways to cater to the super wealthy.

To show what it could do, Mercedes worked with the late artist and designer Virgil Abloh on a series of cars and SUVs. One, a special Mercedes-Maybach S-class S 680 painted in black and tan, was revealed shortly after Abloh’s death in 2021. (Mercedes-Maybach is Mercedes’ ultra-luxury brand.) In this car, even the electronic user interface was customized, and a special perfumed scent was created to diffuse through the interior. The Abloh-designed car was made available to a limited number of customers. Some of these cars have sold at auction for around $350,000.

Even General Motors, with its luxury brand, Cadillac, has entered this arena. This year, the first Cadillac Celestiq electric car was delivered to its anonymous owner. With a starting price of around $340,000, each Celestiq is hand-assembled, not on a moving assembly line but inside a special facility within GM’s Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan.

GM expects to build a small number of Celestiqs this year, but all of those slated for the 2026 model year have been sold, a GM spokesman said. Through this program, GM is learning how to cater to these ultra-rich customers.

“We’ve really identified that time is the most precious thing to the ultra-high net worth individual,” said Rob Sanmartin, a marketing specialist with Cadillac, as he offered a taster Celestiq customization session in an online meeting. If I were a real customer, this most likely would have been done at a design studio in Warren after an earlier meeting to get a sense of my general style.

I was drawn toward one “sustainable” piece of trim material. Unlike the usual wood or metal, it was made from recycled newspaper. It had a subtly ribbed light gray color, almost like birch bark.

“It’s also quite beautiful,” said Sanmartin, “because it’s one of our only very, very neutral decor options, as well as when you get really up close, you can make out little letters and sometimes a word here or there, so it’s kind of romantic.”

Surely, if you look closely enough, there’s a story in there.

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