To Make More Money, Rolls-Royce Is Aiming Higher on Price, Not Production

This April, Rolls-Royce unveiled a new model meant to look down at even the highest of high-end cars.Its battery-powered roadster, known as Project Nightingale, is imposing and intentionally impractical.

Though it is as long as a Cadillac Escalade, it sports only two seats.Like an elite speedboat, it’s all prow and tail.Limited to 100 units globally, this handmade vehicle starts around $3.5 million.

And that’s before expensive customization options, which are myriad and de rigueur, and could add 50 percent to the price.This makes it not just the venerable British carmaker’s top offering, but also an exclamation point on its business strategy: expanding profit by catering to its elite customers’ desire for something uniquely personalized and conspicuously consumable.“We wanted to respond to the growing demand that we see from our clients to create coach-built cars,” said Chris Brownridge, chief executive of the 122-year-old ultraluxury brand, which the BMW Group has owned since 1998.

The demand is real.According to the brand, all 100 Project Nightingale allocations were reserved before the project was even announced publicly.Coachbuilding isn’t new to Rolls.

During the company’s first five decades, every Rolls-Royce was coach-built.The brand would sell a rolling chassis with an engine, drivetrain, instrument panel, steering wheel and upright “Pantheon” grille, and clients would hire a specialty firm to construct a body to their specifications.Rolls never entirely gave up the practice, as it has recently demonstrated with its Sweptail coupe (just one was made, and topping eight figures) and Droptail roadster (a robust four of these were built).

But it is now prioritizing in-house coachbuilding, doubling the size of its manufacturing plant in southern England to accommodate the practice, without noticeably increasing its annual production capacity.More, and more complex, customization processes also invite clients “behind the curtain,” as M...