China is truly a very interesting place for the automotive market. Not only is it the largest automotive market in the world but it also has some of the most high-end clientele of any automotive market in the world. So it’s no surprise then that China has become the world’s biggest car market and for certain premium luxury brands, including Rolls-Royce.
In today’s pandemic-hit world, customers and automakers have to adapt too, looking for different ways to interact with their customers. Mobile apps are on the rise and especially those offering a way to communicate, either via voice, messaging or video. While we might be more reliant on apps like WhatsApp, Instagram or Telegram, China seems to be partial to a different app. Over there, there’s one app that seems to be more popular than all the others WeChat, which has plenty of features, such as even allowing you to transfer sums of money and make payments on the fly.
Commissioned by Jack Boyd Smith Jr., a long-time Rolls-Royce customer and automotive enthusiast, this unique Phantom Extended is the first Rolls-Royce in history to incorporate a rare type of wood: Acacia Koa, a species of tree that is endemic to the Hawaii Archipelago.
The newest creation of the Rolls-Royce Bespoke division took 3 years to complete given the challenges involved by the project, the strict demands of the customer and the use of a very rare, pure-essence type of wood that indigenous to and only found on the Hawaii Islands. We are talking about the Koa wood tree, that was specifically harvested from a private tree collection on the island of Maui.