BEST OF BRITISH: Dream Factory

There's a reason why phrases like "this is the Rolls-Royce of fridges" exist. Because Rolls-Royces are the best.

Now, that's not the sort of absolute proclamation I'd usually bandy about (at least not while sober), but after touring the Rolls-Royce factory, I'm confident of its veracity.

Where else will you find a paint shop that takes a week to paint a car, daubing up to 45kg of paint on each vehicle?

Or how about timber inlays that are painstakingly free of blemishes then sanded by hand for hours before being fitted inside opulent interiors?

And don't get me started on the leather upholstery…

The German-owned British car-maker has a reputation par excellence for hand-crafted bespoke creations – chiefly cars – and after visiting the factory it's not hard to see why.

Oddly though, there's an unexpected sense of serenity at the Goodwood facility, in the south of England. Where you'd expect dirt, sweat, blue language and a sense of pressure, there's an incongruous feeling of calm.

The factory workers are not rushed. Indeed, they happily and politely stop the line for us to film and ask questions – impossible in most car plants. And you sense the vehicles themselves benefit from the sort of attention to detail that would have a chronic OCD sufferer feeling warm and fuzzy inside.

The wood shop is a sterling example. The carpenters take up to six weeks to prepare the timber veneers which eventually become the woodgrain trims within each Rolls-Royce car. The ‘furniture’ start as hand-picked sheets of finely milled wood – we're talking paper thin – which are then lovingly bonded, shaped, and finally sanded and then finished by hand.

Or how about the leather shop? Hides are specially selected from high-altitude alpine cattle in Europe, primarily because there's fewer bug bites and a reduced number barbed wire fences. The result is leather with fewer blemishes.

All organic materials sourced by Rolls-Royce are sustainable insists the company, from the timber to the leather.

The hides are carefully spread on a massive table as an enormous laser descends to cuts the leather into the required patterns. It takes around 450 individual pieces of leather to upholster a Rolls-Royce Phantom, which equates to around 11 hides.

And the leather offcuts that Rolls-Royce doesn't use? Hermes and Louis Vuitton buys them and uses the scraps for their high-end handbags.

Depending on how much individualisation is requested by the buyer, some Rolls-Royce cars take up to 12 months to build at the factory. All told there are 1400 workers who contribute to the construction of the Rollers, and about 20 vehicles are hand-built each day.

Luxury cars are booming now that global markets are on steadier ground, and the levels that some auto-makers are striving for to carve out their piece of the pie are flabbergasting. But Rolls-Royce still has a stranglehold on hand-crafted exclusivity.

The "starlight" headlining that's available in all Rolls-Royce cars is a perfect example… And a mind-boggling production process to witness.

Dozens of metres of optic fibre is threaded through the roof lining, and the entire process takes between 10 and 12 hours to complete. I doff my hat to the patience and skill of the workers – I reckon I'd be throwing a tantrum after 10 minutes!

Like almost every facet of a Rolls-Royce car, personalisation is encouraged with the starlight headlining, as customers routinely request company logos or family crests, which bathe occupants in diffuse light during night time cruising.

The Rolls-Royce paint shop is the only part of the factory that uses robots, and with 44,000 shades and tones available, you're likely to find the colour you're looking for. And if you don't, the British company will create a new colour. And get this – your custom colour cannot be used again without your express permission!

All cars undergo five hours of polishing – by hand, naturally – and there's also coach-lining.

What's coach-lining? It's where an artist hand paints anything the customer desires on their car, from a pin stripes to swirls. The paintbrushes are made from squirrel hair, of course. The soft, fine bristles are ideal for a soft, smooth finish, says Rolls-Royce.

Even the less elegant elements of the car building process in Rolls-Royce's Goodwood factory are fascinating, such as the installation of the 'Flying Lady' and its anti-theft device. It's nice to know that the statue at the front of the car can be retracted electronically when parking in less salubrious areas.

And it's another reason why Rolls-Royce, quite rightly, sells some of the world's most expensive cars.

The most affordable Rolls-Royce, the Ghost, costs around $600,000 in Australia, while the most expensive, the Phantom Coupe, starts at almost $1,000,000. And that’s before any customisation or bespoke work. Ultimately, the sky’s the limit…

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