At the Rolls Royce stand in Geneva, the famous British brand is displaying a one-off Ghost with a new paint called “Diamond Stardust”. While that sounds like one of David Bowie’s pseudonyms, it’s actually a paint scheme that involves the crushing of 1,000 diamonds. According to Rolls Royce, this is the most luxurious and lustrous exterior finish to ever be applied to a car.
The process involves gathering 1,000 ethically-sourced diamonds (no blood diamonds here) and crushing them into a fine powder. Rolls Royce spent quite some time figuring out the best way to do pick the right diamonds and get them crushed into a fine and even powder. That powder is then applied to the paint, which is applied to the top section of the Rolls.
An extra layer of lacquer must be applied to the diamond paint, so that the diamonds are protected from hand polishing. The entire process adds and extra two days to the painting process and an extra day to the finishing process.
After the paint is applied, master coachline painter, Mark Court applies the finishing touches to the car using a squirrel hair brush. A freaking squirrel hair brush? I’m curious how one obtains squirrel hair. Does someone pluck a squirrel? Maybe I don’t want to know.
To be fair, it does look pretty flipping cool. It’s like looking into space, with millions of starts shining. It’s beautifully done and admittedly done with class. So if you want to show all of the other Rolls owners at the country club how much more elegant you are, get some Diamond Stardust paint and drive around like Coco Chanel wearing a squirrel-hair coat.
