Thirty Phantoms
By Frank Bennett · July 8, 2026 · Digest
Thirty Rolls-Royce Phantoms. All finished in signature red paint infused with 24-carat gold flakes. All for a single hotel in Macau. Not a fleet in the loose sense, the way a resort might maintain a half-dozen courtesy cars. This fleet, at the time, was the largest single commission in the history of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.The man behind the order was Stephen Hung, Joint Chairman of The 13 Holdings Limited. His hotel, The 13, was designed to occupy a particular position in Macau's already extraordinary luxury market (Macau being the special administrative region of China where gambling revenue has historically outpaced that of Las Vegas'). The 13 intended to stand above even that baseline. The Phantoms were the welcome mat.Two of the thirty are different.When they were ordered, they were the most expensive Rolls-Royce Phantoms ever commissioned. Looking at the spec sheet, that's not a hard claim to defend.📸: rrsilverspirit.comThe paint alone is ten layers, one of which is a 40-micron deep gold layer combined with glass and aluminum (for shimmer). Rolls-Royce used 23.75-carat gold particles (the slight reduction from 24-carat chosen specifically for even distribution across the surface). The whole process used almost 3 times the paint used on a standard Phantom. Their material scientist, Nick Geehan, noted that achieving the final color required eight separate attempts.The Spirit of Ecstasy was finished in 24-carat gold-plating, mounted on a gold-colored Pantheon Grille. The hallmarked Rolls-Royce badge is 97.1 grams of 18ct gold, plated in 24ct gold, surrounded by 336 pavé-set brilliant-cut diamonds, with vitreous enamel forming the RR emblem. The twin coachlines running down each flank were hand-painted by Mark Court, Rolls-Royce's resident coachline expert, using a fine squirrel hair brush.Inside: large-scale hand-woven black & white leather panels echoed the checkerboard floor of The 13's entrance hall, edged in a new gold pearl-effect leather created specif…