The Charity is (RED), also known as Project Red
Rolls-Royce has just revealed a new special car with paint that took more than a day just to polish. And it will be auctioning it later this month for charity, along with the opportunity to work with an artist to then put a wrap over that priceless paint.
The Charity is (RED), also known as Project Red, which uses that namesake colour across a range of brands and companies in order to raise awareness and funds in support of the fight against HIV/Aids.
In keeping with the campaign, the Rolls Red Phantom is finished in a bespoke shade that Rolls-Royce calls Crystal over Magma Red. The finish contains particles of crystal in the final layers that give it what the automaker calls “a luxurious luminescence.”
Applying that paint takes more than a full day’s worth of time. The finish, which was only recently created by the team at Rolls-Royce responsible for blowing our minds with amazing paint finishes, is comprised of five different layers. Ignoring the time required to actually apply the paint, each of the five layers is polished, by hand, for more than five hours in order to ensure the proper finish. That’s 25 hours just spent polishing.
If that’s not enough, the woods inside each get six coats of lacquer to give them the right finish. The leather for that interior took nine separate hides to complete and is dyed in Arctic White and Mugello Red. The headliner is trimmed in the same red and will have the Rolls-Royce Starlight Headliner with 1,600 fibre-optic lights embedded in the material.
Naturally, with that impeccably applied finish, Rolls-Royce wants you to cover it up. Which would normally horrify us, but in this case it’s for a good cause. (RED) has donated more than US $600 million so far to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria in Africa.
The winning bid will come with the opportunity to work with artist Mickalene Thomas, known for her work with rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel to produce complicated and complex pieces. Thomas will create a custom wrap for the exterior of the Red Phantom based on an original work of art inspired by the car. If that all seems confusing, well, frankly, it is. If you’re fortunate enough to be interested in bidding on this car, it will be part of a special RM Sotheby’s online auction running from tomorrow until the 13th.
Keyword: Rolls-Royce Going Red for (RED)