The Rolls-Royce Manchester Ghost is a bespoke model designed for Manchester to commemorate the historic link between Manchester and Rolls-Royce and was unveiled on 14 April 2023.
The birth of Rolls-Royce began on 4 May 1904, when founders Charles Rolls and Henry Royce first met at the Midland Hotel in the centre of Manchester and agreed to build ‘the best automobile in the world’.
A major source of inspiration for the car is the MANCHESTER BEE, one of Manchester’s most famous symbols and the emblem of the city for over 150 years, which symbolises the strong work ethic of the Manchester people and the city being a hive of activity.
On the exterior, this Manchester Bee-inspired motif is represented in turquoise on the C-pillar, while on the interior it is embroidered on the front and rear seat inserts.
The Manchester Ghost’s traditional silver exterior is given a contemporary accent with turquoise coachlines, pinstriped wheel centre caps also in turquoise, and brake calipers in the same shade finish the exterior elegantly.
A special illumination is designed on the dashboard with 10,000 laser-engraved dots, representing the view of Manchester from the sky. The largest dot in the illumination represents the location of the Midland Hotel, where the two founders of Manchester first met in the early 20th century. The illumination is named after the title of Tony Walsh’s poem ‘This is the Place’, a sentimental tribute to the city of Manchester.
The rear seat centre is embroidered with Manchester landmarks in the same coloured thread, while the headliner features a pattern inspired by a lattice of graphene, a lightweight, strong and flexible material discovered by two professors at Manchester University in 2004.
The illuminated treadplate is inscribed in binary with ‘MCR’, the abbreviation for Manchester, a tribute to the Manchester Baby, the world’s first programme-storing electronic digital computer, which went into operation at Manchester University on 21 June 1948.