Rolls Royce to unveil new car model in Geneva

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd., the luxury car maker unit of BMW, will unveil a new model, as it vies to boost sales, the company's CEO Torsten Mueller-Oetvoes said.

"This year we will see a great product come, we will launch that in Geneva," Mueller-Oetvoes said in an interview with Arabian Business. "That will be an outstanding, fantastic and completely new car for Rolls Royce, very much based on customer feedback, insights and designs. We have collected that over the last couple of years."

Mueller-Oetvoes didn't give further details about the car or its selling price.  

Goodwood-based Rolls-Royce Motor Cars sold 3,575 globally last year, a record in annual sales in the company's 108 history and for the third year in a row. The Middle East market grew 26 percent annually with highest demand for bespoke content coming from the region. The Middle East was the best performing market globally in 2012 with the dealerships in Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia, among the top five best selling dealers around the world. The region is Rolls Royce's fastest growing market and larger than Europe, accounting for 20 percent of what's paid into the company's overall portfolio.  

Last year, Rolls Royce introduced a $1.2 million version of its popular Phantom model in red to celebrate year of the dragon in China. The company sold out the limited edition model within two months.

The US overtook China as the number one market for the luxury car maker in 2012, accounting for 30 percent of all models sold by the manufacturer, despite a sluggish American economy and countries struggling to come out of a recession. China was the number one market for the Goodwood-based car maker in 2011 with the US in second place. Hong Kong remains the city with the largest density of Rolls Royce cars in the world, said Mueller-Oetvoes.

In the Middle East Rolls Royce has created a unique bespoke collection of its Ghost vehicles honouring Abbas Ibn Firnas, a 9th century Arab inventor and poet in Cordoba, Spain during the Ummayad Dynasty famous for being the first man in history to make scientific attempts at flying and who made contributions to a host of different sciences including physics, astronomy and chemistry.

Looking forward Mueller-Oetvoes expects 2013 to be another good year for the company as the car manufacturer increases the number of dealerships around the world and looks to tap new markets in countries like Lebanon, Nigeria, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.