Benjamin Treynor Sloss, Vice President of Engineering at Google and a well-known car enthusiast, has taken delivery of a very personal Rolls-Royce Dawn Black Badge at this year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. Presented to him at the Rolls-Royce Collectors Cocktail Reception on Saturday night by Torsten Müller-Ötvös, Chief Executive Officer of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, this stunningly contemporary Dawn Black Badge was created in collaboration with the Rolls-Royce Bespoke Collective in Goodwood, England in the Slosses’ personal livery
“Our Rolls-Royce story began here at Pebble Beach in 2014 when we were looking for a two-door coupé with four useable seats for adults,” comments Ben Sloss. “Brands such as Aston Martin or Bentley do not offer anything suitable. When we saw the Rolls-Royce Wraith, we loved the style and elegance of the coupé, and when we took it for a test drive we were impressed (really, startled) by how well it accelerated and handled, in addition to the sublime ride quality and materials we already associated with the Rolls-Royce brand. The Wraith offered a unique combination of luxury car experience and sports car performance, and we fell in love with it on the spot.”
Ben’s wife Christine subsequently bought a Rolls-Royce Dawn, a motor car that has become her daily driver. “You can tell which are the favourite cars in our family by the mileage they have on them,” comments Mrs. Christine Sloss. “My Dawn has over 13,000 miles on the clock, because both Ben and I drive it regularly, and we enjoy its open-air experience so much that Ben decided he wanted one too.”
“Christine and I are both gentleman… err, gentleperson racing drivers, competing in endurance races in GT racing cars, and many of our street cars are two-seater supercars with a very distinctive and personal livery,” continues Ben Sloss. “Michael Fux showed me that Rolls-Royce’s craftspeople could create completely personal, outrageous but beautiful colour schemes, and when I heard about the sportier Dawn Black Badge, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to commission a very personal Rolls-Royce.”
“The Rolls-Royce Dawn Black Badge is the most uncompromising expression of open-top luxury in the world, and Ben’s personal vision has demonstrated that Black Badge Rolls-Royces can be some of the most beautiful statements of automotive power on the road today,” commented Torsten Müller-Ötvös, Chief Executive Officer of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars on presenting the car to Mr. Sloss.
The Ben Sloss Dawn Black Badge
Through the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Los Gatos dealership, Ben Sloss worked closely with the Bespoke Collective at the Home of Rolls-Royce in Goodwood to realize his vision for his perfect personal Rolls-Royce. His motor-racing pursuits led him to the more driver-focused Dawn Black Badge as the canvas for his vision, a reinterpretation of the livery on the couple’s racing cars.
“Our racing cars carry the colors of the flag of Modena in Northern Italy. I wanted to see what Rolls-Royce could do with those same colors,” comments Mr. Sloss. “The first time I saw the livery the Rolls-Royce team had created for the Dawn, I burst out with ‘Oh my God, that’s unreal – I love it!!’ It’s outrageous, it’s over the top… it’s perfect. I still grin every time I see it.”
The Bespoke Collective set to work reinterpreting the color scheme into Rolls-Royce design language, creating two new bespoke paint colors for the exterior of his Dawn Black Badge. The intense deep yellow that adorns the main bodywork has been named ‘Superflare’ due to its radiance under the California sun, whilst it is contrasted with the darkest of navy blues named Pikes Peak Blue due to Mr. Sloss’ interest in the king of timed hill climbs. A further flash of Superflare yellow offsets the black of the 21” carbon fiber and aluminium wheel.
The same color scheme is continued throughout the interior of Mr. Sloss’ Dawn Black Badge, with the seats, dashboard, tonneau cover and rear seat waterfall clad in Navy Blue leathers, highlighted with Bright Yellow seat piping, stitched RR headrest logos and, unique to Black Badge models an infinity logo between the rear seats. The yellow theme continues in the cabin with a yellow flash along the door interiors, two-tone Navy Blue and Bright Yellow steering wheel and an exclusively developed Bright Yellow pinstripe applied to the Piano Milori Blue wood dashboard, the first use of Milori Blue outside the one-off customer Phantom, ‘Whispered Muse’, shown at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show. Mr Sloss’ Dawn Black Badge is finished with a Navy Blue leather-clad Aero Cowling enclosing the rear seats.
