drophead coupé waterspeed new collection arrives at lake como.
The Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupé Waterspeed Collection has arrived at its spiritual home in the Italian lakes today for its European debut. Stealing the show on the opening day of the Concorso d’Eleganza at Villa d’Este on the shores of Lake Como, Waterspeed was designed to celebrate Sir Malcolm Campbell’s act of setting a new world
water-speed record on the nearby Lake Maggiore in 1937.
It was on the morning of 1 September 1937 that Campbell established his legend, setting a world-record speed of 126.33mph in the famous Bluebird K3 boat powered by a Rolls-Royce R- Engine.
The following day he went one better, piloting his craft to 129.5mph, emphatically breaking the United States’ five-year stranglehold on the world water-speed record. Campbell’s momentous achievement captured the world’s attention and reaffirmed the Rolls-Royce R-engines’ record-breaking superiority after triumphs on land and in the air.
Celebrating this incredible act of British ‘Derring-Do’, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ Bespoke department has created the Waterspeed Collection, consisting of 35 specially designed Phantom Drophead Coupés, the first of which is displayed at Villa d’Este.
Echoing the cutting-edge technology employed in the construction of Sir Malcolm Campbell’s Bluebird K3 craft, only the finest, newest materials furnish the Waterspeed Collection. Brushed steel perfectly complements an exclusively developed Maggiore Blue colour scheme whilst hand-crafted Abachi wood inlays evoke the sense of a boat effortlessly gliding through water at pace, whilst exterior coachline and laser etchings inside the car bring Campbell’s ‘Bluebird’ motif back to life.
“Sir Malcolm Campbell’s successful pursuit of world-speed records on land and water were the result of his commitment to the most exacting standards of British design and engineering excellence. Such attributes are hallmarks of every Rolls-Royce motor car, ensuring the marque’s position at the pinnacle of super-luxury manufacturing. This special Collection serves to display the breadth of Bespoke personalisation available to every Rolls-Royce customer.”
“This very special motor car serves to pay a perfect homage to my grandfather’s remarkable acts of British daring and endeavour,” said Donald Wales, grandson of Sir Malcolm Campbell. “The extraordinary attention-to-detail and commitment to engineering excellence so evident in these motor cars perfectly echoes the lengths my grandfather and his colleagues went to in their pursuit of the waterspeed records.”
