Bespoke Automobiles

“Why didn’t they do that?” is what owners of bespoke automobiles asked me over dinner in Monterey last week, as we compared Rolls-Royce Private Office, Bugatti Sur Mesure and Porsche Sonderwunsch commissioning experiences.

As they described what each experience had been like, I shared a few ideas of my own.

Not on the car. On the experience of commissioning it.

That’s when I heard: “Why didn’t they do that?” More than once.

Which is interesting given how much these programs already invest in the ultra-luxury client.

Rolls-Royce Private Office can spend months understanding personality, ambitions, dreams, business and family, then connect the client directly with Bespoke designers and Goodwood.

Porsche Sonderwunsch can effectively make the client project lead, with direct access to design, engineering, paint, upholstery and even company historians.

Bugatti puts clients with designers and technicians at Molsheim, with Sur Mesure collaborations that can extend for years.

Three very different marques. Three sophisticated approaches.

Yet across 13 of the world’s leading luxury auto commissioning programs, the underlying philosophy is remarkably familiar:

Research the hell out of the client, personalize, and grant access to the brand’s “inner sanctum.”

Peel it back and it is 13 variations on a theme, with a different badge on the hood.

Client knowledge, personalization and access are formidable capabilities. But the category has begun treating them as the idea, rather than the means of delivering one.

The average Rolls-Royce client is now approximately 43, down from 56. Around 40% of Ferrari’s new clients are under 40. Lamborghini reports significant under-40 populations across its model range.

These clients have spent much of their lives being tracked, profiled, predicted and personalized to.

Knowing everything about them isn’t novel. It may be the least interesting thing a luxury brand can do with them.

Meanwhile, Range Rover is building toward 12 dedicated commissioning locations globally.

So soon we may have a 14th variation on the theme.

The question isn’t whether the suite is beautiful enough, the designer spends enough time with the client, or another detail can be personalized.

For the brands, these programs represent the pinnacle of bespoke. But when their clients heard a few ideas from outside that familiar frame, the response was immediate:

“Why didn’t they do that?”

That is the opportunity: to push the commissioning experience beyond the conventions that now shape even the industry’s most exceptional programs.