Yes I understand all of that .....but my point is How did the cost of building this end up being so much?
I have no doubt it is built to an exemplary standard and I fully appreciate the value of rare objects, but it still seems extremely over-priced. It could be argued that these things are all relative, but I think we live in a time where some people's perspective of value has been completely distorted. The world is awash with massive amounts of cash which has made some people fabulously wealthy ......this has seen the cost of certain things skyrocket to absurd levels.
I doubt we'll ever know the specifics of it, or how Rolls-Royce costed it out, or how how profitable it was for them.
Reading the comments from Torsten Muller-Otvos though I think gives big clues. Rolls-Royce
can do this kind of work, but their commercial structure is not based around this kind of work, therefore I suspect it was costed out as though it was for a new series production car - with all those associated costs of that only being spread across a single unit sale.
If you have a team of people working on something for 4 years, and in those 4 years, that team of people would normally develop one series production car, then the cost applied to the Sweptail must be somewhat comparable, or at least derived from this starting point.
If you have a team of people working on something for 4 years, and in those 4 years, that team of people would normally produce components for several thousand cars, equating to hundred of millions in revenue, the cost of their time might be derived from that as a starting point.
I'm not saying either of those scenarios is a great way of going about things, but they provide a safe
commercial starting point for the company. From Muller-Otvos's comments, I think that was important to them, and the client could afford it.
To think of it another way, how much would you expect the RR Dawn to have cost to develop? To me, 12 million doesn't sound like much, yet the difference between that, and a Wraith is probably comparable to the Sweptail and a Phantom Coupe.
Torsten hints at Rolls-Royce making future platforms more accessible for unique coachbuilding to be performed on them; ‘In theory [we can] because our decision is to go aluminium spaceframe architecture only, and that is the kind of technology that allows, in principle, doing stuff like that.’ He was however, keen to stress that this would need further investigation before allowing any future customers to get too excited about ordering their own unique car.
The Rolls-Royce boss also mentioned how several potential customers have come to the brand to ask for a one-off car before, but this is the only one that has gone ahead thus far. Why now? ‘Because it needs the teaming of the right individuals to do it. For us it was also an adventure because it was completely new territory.’
‘You want to have a partner on board who is sustainable enough, understandable enough that this might need detours, but it was perfect. He [the anonymous client] trusted us, we trusted him and it was the right moment to do it. It’s also the future of luxury long-term; that you go even more custom-built.’
I also think it's easy to underestimate how much bureaucracy, red tape, and back and forth exists in the automotive industry. Providing some of the exquisite detailing of a car like this can be enough of an engineering and design challenge, without worrying about the masses of paperwork that goes with it.... the cost of which, again, is only divided by 1 unit.
Just my two cents.
