Another record sales year for Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce is enjoying a solid start to 2023 with order books already rapidly filling up on the back of a record-breaking 2022.

The fabled luxury marque delivered 6021 vehicles as the world emerged from Covidmania last year, marking an eight per cent improvement on the 5586 vehicles it sold in 2021, which was itself a record-breaking year.

As proud as they are of the sales tally, however, senior executives of the British super-luxury brand said the true success was in the record value of its Bespoke commissions.

“But as a true House of Luxury, sales are not our sole measure of success: we are not and never will be a volume manufacturer,” CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös said.

“Bespoke IS Rolls-Royce, and commissions were also at record levels last year, with our clients’ requests becoming ever more imaginative and technically demanding – a challenge we enthusiastically embrace.”

Predictably, an annual profit figure for the company's Bespoke program hasn’t been made public, but Müller-Ötvös revealed the average Bespoke commission spend was over €500,000, or roughly $771,000 when converted directly into Australian dollars.

That kind of goes without saying given the rumoured £20 million ($A36m) asking price of the one-off 2021 Rolls-Royce Boat Tail.

While global sales were up eight per cent – and almost every major market reported growth – Australian Rolls-Royce sales enjoyed a 25 per cent upswing in 2022 compared to the previous year, with 60 vehicles being handed over including seven in December alone.

It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to find the Rolls-Royce Cullinan was comfortably the most popular model with more than 60 per cent of the local sales (37 units), followed by the ‘sedan’ portfolio (Ghost and Phantom) which contributed 18 units.

Rolls-Royce ‘Coupe’ (Wraith and Dawn) sales were down 75 per cent on 2021 in Australia, undoubtedly the result of their local axing in February.

“We’ve succeeded because we listen and consistently evolve our products in line with our clients’ tastes and requirements, consciously rejuvenating our brand while retaining our innate exclusivity and rarity,” Müller-Ötvös said.

“Our product portfolio has expanded significantly and later this year we will launch the world’s first ultra-luxury electric super coupé: Rolls-Royce Spectre.”

That expansion resulted in the creation of more than 150 new jobs at the company last year and it seems Rolls-Royce is running with the momentum given the 2023 order books are already filling up “far into” the New Year.

A lot of the attention is now being directed at the battery-powered Spectre coupe, which will launch globally in the fourth quarter of the year and kick off the marque’s march toward full electrification by 2030.