Sweptail: Rolls-Royce's £10m bespoke coupe

Rolls-Royce has taken the wraps off a bespoke luxury coupe, the Sweptail, at the prestigious Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este motor show in Italy.

The Sweptail is a specially commissioned one-off coupe that the Daily Telegraph claims cost an unnamed buyer £10m.

Its name is derived from the swept-tail design of coachbuilt Rolls-Royce vehicles of the 1920s, a styling trait the buyer was so fond of that he asked the luxury car maker to create a modern equivalent.

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Underneath the coupe's exterior are the underpinnings of the company's Phantom saloon, only Rolls-Royce has replaced the four-dour design with two 'suicide doors'. Unlike a conventional door, which hinges from the front, suicide doors are connected to the rear of the panel and are often used to enter the cabin more easily.

The Sweptail also cuts the rear bench from the Phantom saloon, meaning only the driver and passenger seats remain.

Other design tweaks include a radical front end highlighted by a thin chrome halo around the outer edges and a roofline that tapers off towards the rear.

The company's chief executive, Torsten Muller-Otvos, says the car "exudes the romance of travel for its own sake, and immediately places Sweptail in the pantheon of the world's great intercontinental tourers".

He suggests that the company might commission more bespoke models in the future, as Rolls-Royce is "listening carefully to our most special customers and assessing their interest in investing in similar, completely exclusive coachbuilt masterpieces".

But Rolls-Royce's head of design, Giles Taylor, told Autocar: "We will probably never repeat the level of involvement we had with a customer for this car ever again".

Taylor says that the company is willing to build more vehicles like the Sweptail, but "it's a risk you might end up with something that doesn't fit the brand, or suit the customer".