Yachts, choppers and private jets – the true stars of Succession
The long-awaited fourth series of the hit TV show arrives on our screens tomorrow. Ed Wiseman reports on the flashy vehicles that bring the real glamour
Vehicles, to some extent, have always been about wealth. How we get around shows the world how much money we have – the more we have, the comfier and faster our vehicles are. That’s why cars, planes and boats play a leading role in Succession. The billionaire Roy dynasty has too much money, so the lives of the characters on the show are spent in and around the fastest, most opulent vehicles in the world – private jets costing £80million, yachts costing £150million, cars a mere £200,000.
The very rich, both on screen and in real life, have what amounts to their own infrastructure, insulated from the rest of us. Succession is an extremely accurate and immersive portrayal of this elite world.
CARS
The characters rarely ride in a car worth less than $100,000. Expensive Maybachs and Range Rovers, worth as much as a small house, appear and disappear as required, driven by servants whose entire working lives are spent serving families like the Roys.
Getting this looking right on screen takes knowledge. Fanny Pereire is a fine art coordinator whose role is to ensure that fictional characters have plausible on-screen collections. She works as part of the team that chooses clothes, watches, bags and cars for people who exist only on screen.
“Just as a character in the show will have a certain piece sitting behind his desk, we’ll say he drives a certain car into the scene,” says Fanny. “That’s the first thing that you’ll see; that will announce who he is. If people don’t notice, but understand the whole story, that means we did our job right.”
Endemic to the rarefied world of Succession is the Mercedes S-Class. It is the car that carries Kendall Roy to the event where he unconvincingly raps along to the Beastie Boys. The S-Class – hypersensible, fairly expensive, extremely comfortable and designed with a profoundly Germanic emphasis on safety – has been the chauffeur’s car of choice since the 1970s.
Cadillac’s huge, anonymouslooking Escalade SUV is a perennial background character in the US scenes in Succession. It is not a common brand in the UK, but Cadillac has been firmly woven into the cultural fabric of the US since being founded in 1902, and has at some points been the pinnacle of luxury. The presidential limo has been a “Caddy” since the Clinton administration – not showy or ostentatious, but patriotic enough to make the right impression to the right people. Perfect for a man like Logan Roy, whose business life is intertwined with politics.
Perhaps the car most characteristic of the extraordinarily wealthy is the
Mercedes-Maybach S, a car that the hoi polloi might not even have heard of. Maybach – founded to build zeppelin engines a century ago – is now the luxury sub-brand of Mercedes, which itself isn’t exactly an affordable choice. Part of its appeal is its low-key, underthe-radar designs, which belie the massive price tag; the S560 model Logan steps out of in the fourth episode of series three is probably worth over $200,000 (£164,000).
BOATS
The silent star of the second series is the 85-metre yacht called Solandge, which was both the opulent backdrop and the metaphorical gilded cage in which the tumultuous finale was set. Designed by Norwegian Espen Øino and built by Lürssen, it was commissioned in 2013 for Russian billionaire Alexander Girda and is now owned by Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz al Saud.
It’s a floating palace, with a crew of 29 and space for 12 extremely well looked-after passengers who can use a sauna, dive centre, swimming pool, three jet skis, four tenders, helipad and dance floor. It’s worth around £150million and, with running costs of around £15million a year, only a few people worldwide can afford it.
PLANES
The aircraft of Succession are totemic of the dynasty’s wealth. Even very rich people would baulk at the cost of a small-ish private jet or a private helicopter transfer over a short distance. So when the Roy family use a Sikorsky S-76B (£6,000 an hour) to go and play softball, or charter a VIPconfigured Boeing 737 (£20,000 an hour), viewers know they’re in the top per cent of the top per cent.
“Private aviation provides a great deal of efficiency, privacy and security, for those who travel often and on a tight schedule,” says Marine Eugène, European MD of Flexjet, the private jet firm that supplied some of the aircraft used in the upcoming series.
Anyone who has flown internationally will at some point have looked out of the window of the departure lounge and wondered what it would take to be in one of the Gulfstreams or Dassaults on the tarmac by the private terminal. Avoiding crowded airports and the long, undignified queues for security is clearly a big part of the product, but fundamentally what you’re buying when owning or renting a private jet is time.
“Flying on a point-to-point basis and on a bespoke schedule can save hours,” explains Marine, referring to the on-demand service that the ultra-rich can buy from companies like Flexjet.
And while aircraft like the Gulfstream G650, which will appear in series four, is capable of carrying a dozen passengers over 6,000 miles in one go, it also gets them there in far better shape than your common or garden Boeing 737 would – the interior is quiet, the air inside is fresh, and the windows are large enough to let natural light prevail.