Rolls Royce is not just a luxury car brand, the authenticity of their work is remarkable. The Phantom Hummingbird, revealed in September 2026, is a one-off Private Commission built on the long-wheelbase Phantom Extended, and the first Rolls Royce with marquetry made from abalone, a marine snail with an iridescent shell.
A Dubai client ordered it as a tribute to his wife. The shells aren’t the bodywork, and you can’t buy this car. But it shows what a ₹10-crore-plus Phantom actually is. Cut a shell 0.06 mm larger than its final size, then sand it by hand until it vanishes into the piece beside it. That is how a hummingbird ended up inside the newest Rolls Royce.
How Rolls Royce Used the Sea Snail Shells
Rolls Royce took the blue-green pearly inner surface of abalone shells and combined it with mother-of-pearl to imitate a hummingbird’s feathers. The craftspeople used a decorative marquetry technique, where small pieces of abalone shell were carefully cut and fitted together to create a design on the rear picnic tables and the “Waterfall” panel. Ash burr veneer covers all three panels, while the picnic tables use silver birch taken from a single log. One report counts 53 shell pieces in the hummingbird and 84 in the flowers.
Outside, the car wears a two-tone Wildberry and White Sands finish, a hand-applied White Sands coachline and a hummingbird painted along the flanks. The rest of the cabin uses Creme Light leather with Moccasin and Tan inserts, and Seashell carpets.
Why a Few Panels Took Nine Months
Abalone is unusually fine and brittle, and that is why this took so long. The design took over nine months to develop, through six iterations. The fix was to thin the pearl and abalone first, so each fragment could be set gently and then lacquered. Fitting and finishing the three panels then took 45 hours, roughly half of it spent on finishing touches. Rolls Royce says the hummingbird’s wings needed a human hand to get a fit with no visible seam.
Rolls Royce has form here. The brand has painted the Milky Way onto a headliner, commissioned an interior from designer Iris van Herpen, and even fitted a gold bar in a centre console. Wallpaper compared these commissions to one-off superyacht builds, where every detail is effectively a prototype.
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The Phantom Extended Specification and Pricing
The Phantom Hummingbird specially designed in a 5,982 mm long body with a 3,772 mm wheelbase. The outstanding 563 bhp power comes from a 6.75-litre twin-turbo V12 engine and given 900 Nm torque makes a Phantom limitless on the road. It runs on a rear wheel drive through an 8-speed ZF automatic by reaching from 0 to 100 km/h in just 5.3 to 5.4 seconds.
Phantom price starts at ₹8.99 crore in India where the Extended Wheelbase comes at a higher price up to ₹10.48 crore ex-showroom. The Phantom Hummingbird price is not published by Rolls Royce. Mileage figures vary by site, from about 7 kmpl to 9.8 kmpl, so be skeptical of any single number. No one buying this car is doing the fuel maths anyway.
Rolls Royce Phantom Extended vs Maybach S 680 and Bentley Flying Spur
The Phantom’s real rival is the Mercedes-Maybach S 680 which runs on a 6.0-litre turbo V12 engine that costs ₹3.43 crore ex-showroom, so it’s about a third of the Extended’s price. The Maybach S 680 is 376 mm shorter than the Phantom Extended’s, the wheelbase is 3,396 mm. It offers the similar V12 and a chauffeur-friendly rear seat but the creativity and design of Hummingbird is something else.
The Bentley Flying Spur starts at ₹5.25 crore ex-showroom. Its Indian range now includes a V6 hybrid making 410 bhp and 550 Nm, and Bentley has dropped its W12 globally. It is a more driver-focused choice, while the Maybach puts rear-seat space and silence first.
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Conclusion
The Phantom Hummingbird is less about the car itself and more about what Rolls-Royce is willing to do for a single customer. Using tiny pieces of abalone shell, matching wood from a single log and spending nine months perfecting the design turns an already expensive Phantom into something closer to a rolling piece of craftsmanship.
You cannot buy this exact car, but the Hummingbird shows why a Rolls-Royce Private Commission can sit far beyond the price of a regular luxury car. In this case, the sea snail shells are not a gimmick; they are part of what makes this one-off Phantom impossible to replicate.
