Is this the one EV that old men don’t hate?
This car is so eye-catching that I saw a motorcyclist damn near fall off while twisting his spine at traffic lights to turn around and gape at it. Children hoot in joy when they see it. What’s it like to drive?
Some years ago I conducted a test where I had a heart monitor attached while lapping the legendary Fiorano Circuit at Ferrari headquarters, and we then attached the monitor to a professional test driver who did the same. To establish a scientific baseline, he and I first watched an episode of The Simpsons. The results showed that while we both hit heart-rate peaks when Homer had his eyes pecked by crows, my pulse soared like a rocket as I wrestled the Ferrari, while my new Italian friend’s cardiac trace was the same on track as it was when he was sitting down doing nothing but looking cool.
I have also noticed that my heart-rate rises proportionally to the price of the borrowed vehicle I’m in. If I am feeling panicked about the prospect of kerbing or being side-swiped in a $1 million car, I carry a certain amount of stress. I once drove a $3.6 million Ferrari and had a series of coronary events as a result.
It was with genuine shock, then, that I noticed just how becalming the $770,000 Rolls-Royce Spectre was to drive, despite not only its price but its cruise-ship-like proportions.
I had attended the original launch of this stupendous electric vehicle in America, where its size and splendour made some sense, but driving it for the first time in Sydney I was struck by the sensation that it was simply too broad for the piddlingly thin lanes on the Harbour Bridge, and everywhere else.
And yet the interior of the Spectre is so soothingly silent, so calm and cosseting, that you feel entirely removed from the real world. You are in a happy place, and in there nothing can bother you. I felt my breathing slowing and my body melting into the seats before I’d even engaged the massage function. This, it struck me, is what it must feel like to be a squillionaire.
Tugging myself from this Rolls reverie, I did manage to notice that on our cracked-up roads the Spectre’s hallmark “Magic Carpet Ride” has to work a lot harder than it did on the carefully curated US launch drive. In truth, while I was made aware that the road imperfections were there, they felt so far away and inconsequential that they didn’t bother me.
I also found that if you make a sudden stop from speed in this almost three-tonne Roller there is a moment of inertia during which the Spectre rocks fore and aft before settling, like a very large water bed after you’ve done something foolish on it.
Speed, despite the relaxed nature of any Rolls, is something that’s very much in evidence in this EV, which uses the enormous 107kWh battery under its floor to provide a prodigious 900Nm of torque at any throttle opening, plus 430kW of power. You can hurl your way to 100km/h in 4.5 seconds and, thanks to the fact that the largely aluminium Spectre is 30 per cent stiffer than any previous Rolls, it also displays surprising stability, even imperiousness, if you want to attack the bends.
Being able to drive this vehicle in a sporty fashion feels entirely out of character, but this simply reflects the Boy Scout-like Rolls approach of being prepared to deliver anything an owner might desire. It’s like discovering that your Rolex can tell you what shares to invest in.
Enormous effort has also gone into the little details, like the tack-tick of the indicators – designed to sound like the clinking of whisky glasses – and the fact that the sounds you get from the parking beepers seem so restrained compared to other cars. This does take some getting used to, however, because I realised I was getting far closer than I should have to objects I was approaching, as there was none of the pinging panic I’m used to hearing.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about the Rolls-Royce Spectre, however, apart from it being the most successful conversion of a combustion-engined brand into an electric one (Rollers have always been designed to be as silent and torque-filled as possible, so it’s just a natural marriage), is the way it looks. Its sequoia-sized bonnet may not have a hulking V12 under it, but it still makes the Spectre look hugely powerful. And the windscreen looks proportionally tiny, adding a real sense of visual drama.
The Spectre is so eye-catching that I saw a motorcyclist damn near fall off while twisting his spine at traffic lights to turn around and gape at it. Children hoot in joy when they see it (allowing one friend’s five-year-old daughter to climb inside and stare open-mouthed at the glowing optic fibre stars sewn into the roof lining was the highlight of the whole experience) and old men harrumph in grudging admission that perhaps there is at least one EV they don’t hate.
On our harried last day together, I completely ignored several things I absolutely had to do and took a one-hour detour on my way to return the Spectre, just so I could soak myself in calm a little longer. This Rolls-Royce could not be called one of life’s little luxuries, but it’s certainly one of its bigger ones.
Rolls Royce Spectre
ENGINE: Two separately excited synchronous motors, one on each axle (430kW/900Nm)
TRANSMISSION: One-speed automatic, all-wheel drive
EFFICIENCY: 23.6kWh per 100km (530km range claimed)
PRICE: $770,000
RATING: 4.5/5
