Rolls-Royce Just Unveiled a Psychedelic, One-of-a-Kind Spectre. Here’s What We Know.

Since its introduction late last year, the Rolls-Royce Spectre has made quite some wafting ripples in the luxury EV landscape. Enough, in fact, for Robb Report editors to have named it the Best of the Best Electric Vehicle for 2024. Its substantial presence and performance make it an obvious choice, with the latter every bit the equal of that found in any of Goodwood’s V-12-engined cars.

What makes the Spectre a standout among other zero-emissions models is its very EV-ness as it embodies the Rolls-Royce ethos of silent comportment and refined luxury, something to which even the most muffled V-12 can never match. (It’s to be noted that the original 2004 Phantom did not have visible exhaust tailpipes, so discreet and elegant was its design.)

Rolls-Royce automobiles, though, have never been shrinking violets. The automaker has been amenable to bespoke commissions from the very beginning, some of which have been remarkable in the extreme. Today, the latest one-off Rolls-Royce is the Spectre Semaphore, which pushes the creative envelope far afield. This unique Spectre features one-of-a-kind artwork on the bonnet (Brit-speak for a car’s hood), which is, according to Rolls-Royce, “a dramatic ‘Marbled Paint Spill’ requiring 160 hours of development by Rolls-Royce craftspeople, who applied silver lacquer and multiple layers of clearcoat for a seamless finish

To us, it recalls paintings by Morris Lewis or Paul Jenkins, whose poured color fields expressed lyrical abstract patterns across vast expanses of canvas or paper, though these were created in far less time than it takes to paint a bespoke Rolls-Royce. The Semaphore Yellow color was “inspired by the informal elegance of coastal California,” according to the marque’s official statement, which we interpret as a romantic glance over the shoulder at the days when driftwood beaches instead of concours lawns were a destination for drivers coming up from bustling Los Angeles or down from freezing-in-the-summer San Francisco.

Donovan’s hit album Mellow Yellow was all the rage in 1966, and the psychedelic patterns of the Spectre’s hood—er, bonnet—would be perfectly at home on a fluorescent Fillmore poster stapled to the wall at a Haight Ashbury love-in. Inhale (the nostalgia) deeply.

Like a field of Van Gogh sunflowers, yellow is carried through the Spectre’s interior in a combination of Bespoke Lemon Yellow and Citrine Yellow leather across the seats, Starlight doors, and above the instrument panel. Grace White and Slate Grey leather is enlivened by Lemon Yellow stitching that enhances the creative vision.

The team at Goodwood also programmed the Spectre’s SPIRIT operating system to illuminate instrument dials in the Semaphore Yellow colorway. Highly polished wood serves as complementing trim, and is finished in Cashmere Grey paint infused with silver mica flakes that sparkle when illuminated.

The Rolls-Royce Spectre Semaphore is infinitely rarer than even a sealed first pressing of Yellow Submarine (The Beatles, 1969). In fact, the factory is emphatic that only one Spectre Semaphore will be built for the entire global market. This one-of-one is available exclusively through authorized dealer partners of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars in the United States.