phantom menace

The $750K Rolls-Royce Phantom Tempus is a cosmic work of art

by Jordan Golson
Updated: 
Originally Published: 
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars

The Rolls-Royce Phantom Tempus Collection takes the rolling-work-of-art concept where no one has gone before with an ultra-exclusive limited run of 20 cars featuring fabulous eyes-toward-the-heavens design touches “inspired by time, astronomical phenomena, and the infinite reaches of the universe.”

"The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion”

Albert Einstein

Alongside more pedestrian accoutrements, the Tempus Collection features a headliner with intricate embroidery and hand-laid fiber-optic lighting in a startling beautiful display inspired by pulsars, remnants of massive star explosions and the most accurate natural clocks in the universe.

The “Frozen Flow of Time” gallery on the dash includes 100 individually contoured columns milled from a single piece of aluminum representing, according to Rolls-Royce, the 100-million-year spin of a pulsar. The columns are black anodized and hand polished, and the traditional dash-mounted Rolls-Royce clock is omitted to give Tempus Collection owners a sense of “freedom from time and its limitations.”

The Tempus is painted in Kairos Blue, a new paint finish that incorporates blue mica flakes which glitter and reflect the light to appear almost as the night sky. Finally, the Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament on each vehicle is engraved with a custom date and location unique to each buyer, making each Phantom Tempus truly one-of-a-kind.

An engraved plaque in the glovebox includes a famous quote on time as a “stubbornly persistent illusion” from Albert Einstein (used with permission from Einstein’s estate, naturally).

The doors include a “swirling, twisting pattern of stars” made from additional fiber-optic illuminations to match the Pulsar on the ceiling.

All twenty of the Phantom Tempus motor cars are already spoken for, with only two coming to the United States. Exact pricing wasn’t disclosed, but Rolls-Royce says it would run north of $750,000. And if you have to ask ...

“With Phantom Tempus, our sources of inspiration are on appropriately grand scale: time, deep space, and a theoretical physicist who changed the way we see the universe and our place within it.” — Torsten Müller-Ötvös, CEO of Rolls-Royce

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