Rolls-Royce is celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Black Badge line of cars created in reply to a new and younger generation of tech entrepreneurs, entertainment celebrities and more coming into its fold.
From the very beginning, Rolls-Royce has been defined by individualism, rebellion and a willingness to defy convention, explains Chris Brownridge, CEO of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.
Rolls-Royce Black Badge cars are characterised by darkened features such as the wheels and the iconic Rolls-Royce grille. The Spirit of Ecstacy also transforms into an angel of darkness when cast in the onyx-hued material.
The Black Badge legend was established in 2016 with the debut of the Black Badge Wraith and Black Badge Ghost at the Geneva Motor Show, but the lineage can be traced almost a century back to the 1928 Rolls-Royce 20 HP Brewster Brougham delivered to JE Alfred with a highly unusual addition: the Spirit of Ecstasy and radiator grille all finished in black rather than the traditional bright metal.
In 1964, The Beatles co-founder John Lennon also ordered a new Rolls-Royce Phantom V in black everywhere, inside and out. Coachbuilders Mulliner Park Ward delivered the car in deep black gloss, including its bumpers and wheel discs. Only the Pantheon grille and Spirit of Ecstasy remained in chrome.
A new generation
A younger, more dynamic and self-driving generation of entrepreneurs emerged and approached Rolls-Royce, demanding new codes of luxury: darker in aesthetic, more assertive and disruptive in character and bolder in design.
This would require the marque to create a dedicated space within the brand for a more daring expression of Rolls-Royce and one that could coexist with its classically inspired identity. Vivid new colours and technical materials were introduced, matched by a more powerful, agile and sonorous dynamic character.
Engineered darkness
Rolls-Royce presented this bold new expression of the brand in a signature treatment: one of the motorcar industry’s darkest blacks created from 45kg of atomised paint and applied to an electrostatically charged body-in-white before being oven-dried. The car then received two layers of clear coat before being hand-polished by four craftspeople to produce the marque’s signature high-gloss piano finish.
At between three and five hours in duration, this operation was entirely unknown in series production, creating a unique and peerless intensity. This depth of darkness also provided the perfect canvas for a bright, high-contrast, hand-painted Coachline.
The company also developed a process for the highly polished Spirit of Ecstasy and Pantheon grille to be presented in black. Instead of painting these icons, a specific chrome electrolyte was introduced to the traditional chrome plating process that is co-deposited on the stainless-steel substrate, darkening the finish. Its final thickness is just one micrometre — about one hundredth of the width of a human hair — and precision polished by hand to achieve a mirror-black chrome finish.
Black Badge wheels are specially designed to enable a sportier stance of the car and to work well with the lowered, reinforced and subtly stiffened chassis and increased power and torque outputs from the more potent powertrains. All V12 Rolls-Royce cars are equipped with a discreet “Low” button on the gear selector stalk, allowing the driver to hold lower gears when required. In Black Badge cars, this existing control was recalibrated to access an additional reserve of power.
Black Interiors
Inside, new materials were developed that draw on technical palettes from the world of aerospace. Artisans explored surfaces including carbon fibre through an entirely new lens interlaced with fine threads of aluminium just 0.014mm in diameter, then finished with six coats of lacquer, cured for 72 hours and hand-polished to a deep lustre.
Mirror-finished metal surfaces were also darkened while the interior brightwork, including the marque’s “eyeball” air vents and bespoke audio speaker frets, was treated using a technique called physical vapour deposition, a metal-colouring process that ensures parts will not discolour or tarnish over time, or with repeated use.
Black Badge models and special commissions
The Black Badge Ghost and Black Badge Wraith were followed by Black Badge Dawn, Black Badge Cullinan in 2019 and the Black Badge Spectre.
While Black Badge motor cars were often presented in a signature dark treatment, many clients chose to express it in vividly individual ways, commissioning vibrant exterior hues from Rolls-Royce’s palette of more than 44,000 colours or creating entirely new Bespoke finishes of their own, including a vivid lime green recalling the Australian green tree frog, a luminous red inspired by the blossoms of the ‘Ōhi‘a lehua, and a deep, iridescent purple drawn from the exotic butterfly Rhetus periander.
Notable examples of landmark private collections and private commissions include Black Badge Adamas (2018); Black Badge “Neon Nights” paint trilogy (2020); Black Badge Landspeed (2021); Black Badge Wraith Black Arrow (2023); Black Badge Cullinan “Blue Shadow” (2023); Black Badge Ghost Ékleipsis (2023); and Black Badge Ghost Gamer (2025).
