BMW News

As exciting or disappointing as Super Bowl 49 was to millions of football fans, another event took place in the Phoenix area during Super Bowl week that was even more impressive for fans of fine automobiles: the Rolls-Royce Phantom Nighthawk made its North American debut.

The Nighthawk is a special edition of the Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupé and is made exclusively for the U.S. market. How exclusive? The Nighthawk that cruised the streets of Phoenix was one of nine.

Bespoke is a word that’s starting to appear in mainstream automobile advertising, but Rolls-Royce has been using it for some time. The dictionary defines bespoke as custom made or made to order. Rolls-Royce Head of Bespoke Lars Klawitter explains in more detail as it pertains to his customers, "We're here to bring your dream of owning a Rolls-Royce to life, so however unique you want it to be, we're here to make it happen. You can create a unique car with our Bespoke program. Work with your dealer or our Bespoke team on everything from the smallest details to the biggest statements. Then our engineers and craftsmen will bring them to life.”

The first of nine Phantom Drophead Coupé Nighthawk Bespoke Collection cars that made the scene during Super Bowl week showed off a low profile that the company says was inspired by modern aerospace stealth technology. (This would not be the first time that luxury cars took design cues from aircraft. Harley Earl’s 1948 Cadillac had tailfins that were inspired by the P-38 Lightning World War II-era fighter.)

The nine Nighthawk Phantom Drophead Coupés were to be made available through the 41 North American Rolls-Royce dealerships. The Nighthawk is covered in Diamond Black Metallic paint with a Matte Diamond Black hood. The windshield surround is said to be inspired by the radar-absorbent material used in military aircraft. As good as it looks, we would be even more impressed if it actually absorbed radar—especially the kind that is usually followed by lights and sirens.

Carbon fiber is used liberally throughout the interior to augment the full-leather treatment. The instrument panel especially gets the full carbon-fiber experience.

The Nighthawk, like all Rolls-Royces, has an outstanding V12 engine. We know it’s a good engine because while it may say Rolls-Royce on the valve covers, it’s DNA is pure BMW. As members of the BMW Group product family, there is some under-the-skin component sharing going on between BMW and Rolls-Royce, and that will become more common in the future.

The Nighthawk has adaptive LED headlights and a glowing bar of LED daytime running lights, so if the fact that it’s a Rolls isn’t enough to catch your eye, the lit-up front end should.

A base model Phantom Drophead Coupé costs pretty close to $500,000, so we can only imagine what a fully personalized and customized special edition like the Nighthawk would run, but it probably falls smack in the middle of the “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it" category. We do know that if we could afford one, we would definitely give the chauffer the night off and drive it ourselves.—Scott Blazey

[Photos courtesy of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.]