Is this the wittiest Rolls-Royce interior yet?
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
I can just about recall it: it must have been 1972, and I was about 10 years old. And the strangest sequence of events unfurled.
My dad, Ted Macauley, a journalist, had said a friend would be collecting us to go get something for the living room, and, being 10, I had to go with them because I couldn’t stay at home alone (yes, I know, Macauley and Home Alone work well together in a phrase…).
We had a rocking chair in the front window, where I’d sit to watch comings and goings, and being a bit of a car nerd – before the word was invented, I suspect – I sat up when I saw a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow pull up outside our then home.
I shouted my dad to come have a look, not for a minute thinking it was his friend and our lift. Dad looked out and said “that’s us, let’s go”.
That’s when the first strange bit kicked in.
Manchester United footballer George Best (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Soccer Legend George Best Is Outside
Outside, dad opened the back door of the Rolls-Royce. I climbed in – and there in the driver’s seat was Manchester United soccer star George Best. Of course.
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If you don’t know who George was, whether through geography, knowledge of soccer (or football…) or your age, George was the David Beckham of his era.
Dad jumped in, introduced me to George, who hardly stopped talking to me about school or football.
They kept dodging my questions about where we were going, and after about 20 minutes we arrived in one of those seen-better-days independent business areas near Manchester city centre, old mills and warehouses, which even now are in my memory in monochrome.
George pulled through an archway and into the back yard of some kind of wholesaler, electronics, by the look of things, confirmed when we made it through the door into a shop counter area with display shelves of TVs, radios and record players — and just a few minutes later gasps from staff and muted squeals from girls peering through the windows of the back office.
Rolls-Royce Ghost Gamer. Everywhere you look is gaming wit.
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
I Had One Of The World’s First Video Games Consoles
A big man in a sleeveless woollen jumper smoking a huge cigar came through a door and loudly greeted George and my dad. They all talked noisily for a few minutes about football, and, I think nightlife, before the man with a cigar said something along the lines of “may as well get the autographs and photos out of the way before they go mad in the back”, turned, nodded at the door, and a line of squealing girls and awestruck young men tumbled out.
George was, with hindsight, flirty with the girls and interested in which football club the boys supported. After 20 minutes of mayhem, the big man with the cigar handed George and my dad a box each.
With more hindsight, it was an early embodiment of internal PR activity.
“Cheeky Alien” – big pixel-style hand painted motif on each side of the Ghost Gamer
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
A Highly Collectible Arcade-Style Video Game – In The Trash
George dropped us at home, and my dad opened the box. In it was something that looked like a cross between an electric heater and a radio. It was orange and black, and had quite a few wires and what I could only describe as being a couple of handsets of the era.
He followed the typewritten instructions and connected it to our TV set.
Baffled, he explained it was a game.
It was, in fact, one of the very first TV video games — table tennis.
Such games progressed fast, so, five years later, my parents had a clearout —and flung it. I dare not think what that might be worth today.
Cheeky Alien makes appearances everywhere, as do gaming surprises, if you can find them.
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
Rolls-Royce Ghost Gamer – Arcade Wit On Wheels
It might even have been worth enough to generate enough funds to at least put a deposit down on a Rolls-Royce Ghost. Conveniently, they’ve just handed over to a client a car called the Ghost Gamer.
The commission is themed on ’70s and ’80s arcade and video console games. It’s full of gaming wit.
It’s a Bespoke department commission inspired by the 8-bit universe of vintage video games. Created for a client with a passion for early arcade culture, the car incorporates “intricately crafted references to the dawn of gaming”.
The seats are embroidered with “Player One” to “Player Four”, a “Pixel Blaster” Starlight Headliner, a unique “Laser Base” illuminated fascia, and a hidden cache of joystick-era surprise-and-delight features, the designers having placed each detail in such a way that discovering each becomes a game of its own.
Exterior is Salamanca Blue, with an upper body in deep-shimmer Crystal over Diamond Black – a theme Rolls-Royce says echoes the super-metallic, neon-lit aesthetic of classic arcade hardware.
My son, Ben Macauley, who lives and works in Los Angeles, is a games designer. He’s recently completed his contribution to the most recent “Call of Duty”, and is now with Lightspeed Los Angeles working on a project so secret he won’t tell me what it is.
This is a Rolls-Royce Ghost that’s almost all about the inside.
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
A Games Designer’s Verdict On Rolls-Royce Ghost Gamer?
He’s amongst the ultimate arbiters of cool.
So I asked him what he thought.
“It’s cool,” he said. He’s economical with his words, but incisive.
Anything else?
“I think I’ll save up for one.” He’s also serious when he says that sort of thing.
Rolls-Royce were a little more effusive: “Rolls-Royce designers worked closely with the client to develop a unique motif to codify the commission. Nicknamed the ‘Cheeky Alien’, it appears as a hand-painted green coachline motif alongside a pink 8-bit explosion design on one side of the motor car, and yellow and blue on the other. Created from 89 individual ‘pixels’ – each just 3mm by 3mm – it recalls the bitmapped graphics of early video games,” they said in a statement.
“The retro-futurist theme continues with an Illuminated ‘Spirit of Ecstasy’ and Illuminated ‘Pantheon’ Grille.”
But it’s mainly about the “Black and Casden Tan” interior, each detail designed to echo the visual language of a late 1970s video game arcade.
Is this The Wittiest Rolls-Royce Interior Yet?
The colours used in the stitching take inspiration from the electric hues displayed on vintage arcade monitors, contrasted with block-colour “Cheeky Alien” – the car’s theme name – embroideries on each “Player” headrest. Reflecting the exterior coachline Cheeky Alien motifs, the artwork is made up of individual pixels – 89 in total per design.
The area between the rear seats, named the Waterfall, there are two inlaid stainless steel flying saucer spaceships hovering above a hand-painted lunar scene with a starscape backdrop; a design inspired by the artwork on early arcade game cabinets. Remember those? I do.
The Illuminated Fascia – a feature that debuted on Ghost – evokes the “Laser Base” backdrops of many early games. It includes a gunship composed of 85 individual stars, while the constellations are adjusted so the ship appears to surge through the starfield.
The cabin roof is “Pixel Blaster” Starlight Headliner. A formation of 80 bitmapped battlecruisers spans the canopy, each using hand-placed fibre-optic lights. The signature “Shooting Star” function has been reprogrammed to simulate laser fire, and beams of light pulse from the ships across the ceiling, adding some arcade game-style drama.
The commission is completed with illuminated treadplates, visible when the doors are open, each displaying a classic arcade-game prompt: “PRESS START”, “LOADING…”, “LEVEL UP” and “INSERT COIN”.
Who’d commission such a car? Well, it is, of course, a tech entrepreneur.
Game over…
