Simon de Burton

The Rolls Royce Boat Tail: is this Britain’s most eccentric car?

  • From Spectator Life

This morning, as I was attempting to adjust my 17-year-old Audi’s LED clock which was 11 hours behind as a result of a flat battery, the sage words of F. Scott Fitzgerald sprang to mind: ‘Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me…..’

Which succinctly explains why the very rich couple who commissioned Rolls-Royce to build them a bespoke car from the ground up didn’t have to cut corners with a digital clock. Instead, they asked the designers at the proudly British, German-owned marque to collaborate with Swiss watch house Bovet 1822 to make not just one ‘timepiece’ to grace the car’s ‘fascia’ (as the very rich call the dashboard), but two. His ‘n’ hers watches that not only have dials on either side to enable them to be reversed when worn on the wrist, but which can also be popped off their straps and slotted into the car to serve as haute horlogerie ‘fascia clocks’.

Pascal



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