Announcing the winner of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ Young Designer Competition, Torsten Müller-Ötvös — the company’s CEO — said: “The entries that stood out for us were those that showed a real depth of thought, effort and expression, and incorporated lots of different details.

The best didn’t just draw ‘the nicest car’, they created ‘amazing experiences’ that showed the freedom of their imagination, not hindered by physical, real-world constraints. The winning entry is quite extraordinary.”

Gavin Hartley, the company’s head of Bespoke Design, said: “We were particularly drawn to Bumblebee 5000 because it’s all about sociability, having fun, sharing good times and enjoying the finer things in life, which is exactly what Rolls-Royce is all about, too.

“It also reflected our own interest as a company in the natural world and bees in particular, as we have our own resident colony of 250,000 English honey bees at our Goodwood facility.”

The winning entry — the Rolls-Royce Bumblebee 5000 — was designed by 11-year-old Sofia, who said: “The Bumblebee 5000 is the very best way to travel in and to have parties in with your family and friends.

“Moving smoothly, it will take you wherever you want to go with style and having fun. With comfortable tables and chairs, a disco ball, the best surround sound system, Wi-Fi, GPS, driverless, a hook for luggage and much more, it makes it the best option in the automobile market. It changes colour depending on the occasion or season of your choice.”

Sofia’s design has been transformed into a digitally rendered illustration by the Rolls-Royce design team, using the same software and processes as they would in a ‘real’ Rolls-Royce design project (Rolls-Royce is also donating a complete Greenpower electric car kit to Sofia’s school, enabling it to participate in the Greenpower design-build-race challenge).

Devised to provide a creative outlet for children aged 16 and under, confined by Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, the design competition attracted more than 5,000 entries from over 80 countries.

With no rules or specified judging criteria to constrain them, children were able to let their imagination run free, creating designs of “extraordinary richness, creativity and diversity”.