There’s something of the night about the Rolls-Royce Black Badge Spectre. It’s the kind of car you could get up to no good in under the cover of darkness. My £400,000 example looks custom-designed to exit a Miami nightclub in the most menacing and outré manner, cloaked as it is in Vapour Violet, a shade I could’ve imagined Prince designing an entire touring wardrobe around. I’m surprised they didn’t call it Purple Reign.
There have been two major step changes by Rolls-Royce in recent years. Firstly, Black Badge was launched on the Spectre’s petrol-chugging predecessor, the Wraith, in 2016, and it now represents half of all Rolls-Royce sales. The metalwork takes inspiration from the fact Rolls customers all carry a black Am-Ex Centurion card. Black means luxurious, exclusive, mysterious, and minted, so Rolls have de-chromed the grille and Spirit of Ecstasy. The Black Badge has gorgeous, brawny 23in carbon-fibre rims. It eschews mahogany for modern materials and its customers are encouraged to embrace a colour palate that’s inspired more by rave music than the Royal Mews.
Even behind the wheel it feels edgier, due to its slightly firmer ride, more urgent throttle, and discernible growl. It’s designed for a younger demographic: filthy rich under 40s who identify as disrupters.
A decade ago, if you’d visited the home of a Rolls-Royce owner and asked the way to the loo, they’d have told you “down the hall, past the Monet and left at the Picasso”, recalling the floorplan of Jeffrey Archer’s penthouse. But now, at least as far as the Black Badge gang goes, it’s more likely that the owner’s art collection comes in the form of NFTs. They reject suits for streetwear and use blockchain not banks.
The second step change is electrification. In 1900, six years before co-founding Rolls-Royce, Charles Rolls test drove an electric carriage with 3.75 horsepower. Despite the lack of grunt, the 23-year-old Rolls was thrilled by the effortlessness and peacefulness of the technical package. He and Henry Royce’s efforts thereafter were about trying to attain the same velvety motion, but from the more practical large-capacity petrol-powered motor.
Rolls noted “the electric car is perfectly noiseless and clean. There is no smell or vibration. They should become very useful when fixed charging stations can be arranged.” That prophecy has been the North Star of Spectre’s development: a rakish coupé that seamlessly weaves heritage with high-tech, and a grand tourer that is a Rolls-Royce first and an EV second. It’s no exaggeration to describe this grand tourer as the most revolutionary R-R in a century.
It really is the perfect powertrain: clean, reliable, oodles of torque (1,075 Nm) and power (650bhp – the most ever from a Roller), and, most importantly, it’s silent. The downsides of batteries, most notably weight and the lack of a sporty roar, have little importance here. Of course it’s heavy (over 2.9 tonnes), it’s a Rolls-Royce! Bond baddie Auric Goldfinger’s yellow and black Phantom III Sedanca de Ville managed to go under the radar because its bullion-based bodywork barely tipped the scales more than the standard model’s.
What’s crucial is that it’s smooth, quiet, and cosseting in every way. The Spectre is the first Roller in 20 years not to be thrusted by BMW’s venerable V12, redefining the most famous marque in luxury motoring for the digital age.
The Black Badge Spectre sits low and wide, with a gently raked Pantheon grille that visually sees the car hug the road, and a split headlight design harking back to its Phantom Drophead Coupé bloodline. This is the most aerodynamic shape upon which the Spirit of Ecstasy has ever stood, with a 0–60mph time of 4.1s aided and abetted by the first launch control system to feature in a Rolls.
The VIP booth stylings continue inside. Here, this massive machine shrinks around the occupants. The modestly sized infotainment screen is at odds with the hyperscreens we’ve seen from other EVs. The optional digital throttle noise, which I would avoid on a non-BB Spectre, actually lends itself to this more playful atmosphere.
The ambience treads a very fine line between red carpet glitz and luxuriant substance. Rolls’ aesthetes have, I’m told, turned to haute couture for inspiration, in particular the work of Kei Ninomiya, Rick Owens, Yohji Yamamoto and John Varvatos. In terms of peers, Rolls has also compared its work to pioneering sailing yachts Maltese Falcon, Black Pearl and Philippe Starck’s Sailing Yacht A.
With a chassis that’s a highly modified version of the Cullinan’s platform, the ride has been re-engineered to provide Rolls’ signature waftability despite the increased weight and stiffness that comes with the batteries.
I tested it on a racetrack near Barcelona. It corners nicely flat, flatter than the ‘silver’ version, but the gravitational bloating doesn’t help with turn-in, and it’s not as sharp as a Black Badge Wraith through the bends. That and the driver’s off-side sight line in tight turns are my main criticisms; the A-pillar and wing mirror are both so huge that, to see where you’re steering, one often has to peek through these slabs of bodywork like they’re Venetian blinds and you’re on a Neighbourhood Watch stakeout.
Given the Spectre’s girth and tonnage and Rolls’ heritage of crossing continents in insouciant style, I’d expected it to boast a range figure verging on that of an ocean liner. It doesn’t. The official maximum on a full battery charge is 329 miles. Its Munich-based cousin, the BMW i7, will do 387 miles, while Mercedes-Benz’s boring but brilliant EQS 450+ puts all in the shade with 511 miles.
Apparently, there’s been a shift in Rolls’s client needs in recent decades, with whom the engineers and CEO Chris Brownridge are in a constant dialogue. While John Lennon rode all around Europe in the back of his gypsy caravan-inspired Phantom V, the company’s current patrons are much more likely to send for their chopper or PJ for journeys of more than 300 miles.
They’re also unlikely to miss grubby gas stations, preferring to charge in the convenience of their own high-security driveways and subterranean garages, unseen by the great unwashed. A ten to 80 percent charge takes the Spectre just 34 minutes when using the recommended 195kW charger. Owners can keep an eye on the charging and other functions of their car via the Whispers app; a Rolls-Royce social network that claims the highest net worth of any car club on Earth.
From its very earliest days, Rolls-Royce has attracted creative minds, free spirits, and iconoclasts – Lennon, Elvis, and Elton among them. It’s worth considering that the company’s founders, Rolls and Royce, were the disrupters of their day. Had they been born a century later, maybe they could pass for Silicon Valley bros. Their backgrounds couldn’t have been more different (engineer Royce came from nothing, while aristo Rolls wore white tie spattered with oil, earning him the nickname ‘Dirty Rolls’), but they were both mightily ambitious and bonded over their love of technology and desire to shake things up. With the Black Badge Spectre, their visionary and subversive ways are being celebrated today.
