Rolls-Royce Motor Cars unveiled the Phantom Hummingbird on September 15, 2026, in Goodwood, West Sussex, marking the first use of abalone shell marquetry in the marque's history.
The Phantom Extended Private Commission was conceived as a tribute to a client's wife and brought to life through the company's Private Office Dubai.
The car is named after the hummingbird, which the company describes as a symbol of joy, resilience and the ability to find beauty in every moment. The marquetry combines abalone shell, valued for the blue-green lustre of its nacreous inner surface, with mother-of-pearl to depict the bird's feathers. A hand-painted hummingbird also appears on the exterior coachline.
Marquetry
The marquetry appears in two compositions. A hummingbird formed from 53 pieces of abalone shell and mother-of-pearl — 18 of them in the wings alone — appears on each Picnic Table.
A botanical motif made of 84 pieces is set on the Rear Waterfall panel between the two rear seats. The composition was developed over more than nine months, and Rolls-Royce's Bespoke Collective needed six iterations to find a workable technique for a material the company describes as unusually fine and brittle.
Each piece of shell is laser-cut 0.06 mm larger than its final size to allow for burn margin, then filed to shape by hand, before pieces are thinned, seated and lacquered. Rolls-Royce said the three panels together took 45 hours to complete once cutting and fitting were done.
Phil Fabre de la Grange, Head of Bespoke at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, said: "The natural world has always been a rich source of inspiration for Rolls-Royce Bespoke commissions, offering extraordinary forms and colours for our designers and craftspeople to interpret. Our clients continually invite us to explore that inspiration in new and unexpected ways, as this remarkable Private Commission so perfectly demonstrates. The introduction of abalone shell into Rolls-Royce marquetry presented our designers and craftspeople with a fresh creative and technical challenge, resulting in an elegant tribute to the hummingbird's mesmerising presence."
Interior and Exterior
Ash Burr veneer forms the background of all three marquetry panels, with Silver Birch — cut from a single log — appearing within the Picnic Table motifs. The seats are trimmed in Creme Light leather with Moccasin and Tan detailing, set against Seashell carpets and a Starlight Headliner.
The exterior is finished in Wildberry on the lower body and White Sands on the upper body, divided by a hand-applied White Sands coachline that carries the hummingbird motif along the length of the car.
Comparison with Earlier Commissions
The Phantom Dentelle, unveiled by the Dubai office, used an embroidered Gallery fascia made of more than 160,000 stitches rather than shell marquetry. Rolls-Royce's centenary-year commissions for Phantom included the Cherry Blossom, with over 250,000 stitches of 3D embroidery, and the Year of the Dragon, with 768 red and 576 white fibre-optic stars.
Rolls-Royce has not disclosed how the nine-month development time or 45-hour build for the Hummingbird's marquetry compares in scale to these embroidery- and light-based commissions, which use different techniques and are not directly measured in the same units.
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is a wholly owned subsidiary of the BMW Group, separate from Rolls-Royce plc, the aircraft engine manufacturer. Over 2,500 people work at its Goodwood, West Sussex headquarters, the only site where Rolls-Royce cars are designed, engineered and built by hand.