- The 2024 Rolls-Royce Ghost Ékleipsis celebrates the natural majesty of the solar eclipse with special copper paint and Mandarin orange accents.
- The cabin is decked out with an elaborate dashboard artwork and a bejeweled timepiece, as well as a unique Starlight headliner that mimics the sequence of an eclipse.
- Only 25 examples are being built, and they are all already sold.
On Saturday, October 14, large swaths of the Western Hemisphere will experience a partial solar eclipse, with the moon expected to block up to 80 percent of the sun in places like Dallas, Texas, during the natural phenomenon. To honor the event, Rolls-Royce created a special version of the Ghost, a Black Badge model called the Ékleipsis Private Collection. Just 25 examples are being crafted, and they are all already spoken for.
The Ékleipsis is painted in Lyrical Copper, lending the Ghost a moody aura in dark settings but sparkling under brighter lighting. A bright orange hue called Mandarin appears on the front bumper and brake calipers, “recalling the intense pulses of sunlight witnessed as the eclipse progresses,” Rolls-Royce says. A delicate, hand-painted Mandarin coachline also runs along the Ghost’s shoulder line, with a dotted motif meant to represent the “transition from sunlight to darkness.”
Rolls-Royce is well-known for its Starlight headliner, with hundreds of tiny lights embedded into the car’s ceiling to emulate the night sky. The Ékleipsis has a unique setup, with an animation that plays when the doors close and engine is started that displays a circle of 940 “stars” representing the corona of light that peeks around the moon during the eclipse, surrounded by 192 other LEDs that act as the stars that suddenly become visible during daytime when a total eclipse occurs. The animation lasts seven minutes and 31 seconds, the maximum duration of a total solar eclipse, after which all of the LED stars illuminate. Rolls-Royce says this animation took a full year to develop.
On the dashboard sits an intricate artwork consisting of 1846 laser-etched “stars,” with the dazzling display taking a singular technician 100 hours to create. To the left sits a unique timepiece with a 0.5-carat diamond integrated into the clock’s bezel, inspired by the “diamond ring” effect that sees a single point of light become visible right before and after the moon moves in front of the sun. The two-tone seats have over 200,000 perforations in a unique pattern, exposing Mandarin accents under the black leather.
Rolls-Royce fitted a few other neat touches: the door sill plates are illuminated and the umbrella hidden in the doors—a Rolls-Royce staple—wears Mandarin piping. The Ghost Ékleipsis also comes with a unique indoor car cover. Rolls-Royce says all 25 examples have been claimed, and while no price was revealed, we bet those customers paid a pretty penny more than the Ghost’s $351,000 starting price.
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Associate News Editor
Caleb Miller began blogging about cars at 13 years old, and he realized his dream of writing for a car magazine after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and joining the Car and Driver team. He loves quirky and obscure autos, aiming to one day own something bizarre like a Nissan S-Cargo, and is an avid motorsports fan.
Source: Motor - aranddriver.com
