Owning a Rolls-Royce isn’t a sign that you’re striving for the top—if you own a Rolls-Royce, you’re probably already there. But the top is changing, and a generation of crypto traders and Silicon Valley overnight billionaires are finding themselves perched there much earlier in life than they may have expected. Still, while there may be one or two more sports cars in their fleet than someone at a later stage of life, each is finding that their collection is not complete unless there’s a Rolls in the garage.
Not that the Black Badge Ghost is a sports car—Rolls-Royce are quick to tell you that. But it may be the car that makes you stop worrying about the distinction, because the Black Badge Ghost, more than any Rolls-Royce before it (and perhaps better than any car before it) can handle whatever you throw at it, and the further you push it, the more it shows you the extraordinary things it can do. To put it simply, this is the most complete driving experience Rolls-Royce has ever released to the market.
With the Black Badge Ghost, the newest car to join the Rolls-Royce fleet, those sports cars may be spending more time in the garage, and owners may find themselves yearning to be in the driver’s seat of the traditionally-chauffeured car more than ever before.
We’re five years now into the Black Badge project for Rolls-Royce, a line of cars tailored to a more urgent and bold character, with a stripped back, ‘post-opulent’ aesthetic as they call it that captured the darker spirit that more and more were asking for in their custom-made designs, first with the Wraith and Ghost in 2016, then the Dawn in 2017, then the Cullinan in 2019. With the latest Black Badge Ghost, equipped with technology never-before-seen in the previous models, the Black Badge has fully come of age, and perhaps even surpassed its silver counterparts in many ways.
A professional driver who has had the opportunity to drive the car from one side of Europe to the other told me something startling—even with all the supercars he’s had under his care, he made the journey faster than he ever had before. That’s not just because of the speeds that it can reach, but the comfort at which it can handle them, comfort both for the car and the driver, with increased torque and flexibility, with transmission and throttle treatments that makes kicking things into gear feel seamless. Having driven the car both to its limits on a closed course and along the English countryside, as well as experienced a relaxed drive from the backseat, it was clear this car has gained a lot while sacrificing little.
For a brand with nearly 120 years of history, it’s a wonder how far things have moved to get here just in the last decade. In fact, for most of the 2000s, the only car produced by Rolls-Royce was the seventh generation of the Phantom, until the smaller Ghost joined it in the fleet in 2009.
The Phantom, now in its eighth generation, is still the brand’s flagship model, and it’s not hard to see why—it’s the definitive Rolls-Royce experience, especially if you employ a chauffeur, with the most luxurious cabin ever found in a car, offering a silent and smooth drive to go along with roominess that has to be experienced first-hand to be understood. It may be the priciest car in the Rolls-Royce fleet, but it delivers on every promise of what a Rolls-Royce is supposed to be, still making it the gold—nay, platinum—standard, even with its silver badge.
When Rolls-Royce revived the Wraith, a name that hadn’t been used since the 1950s, in 2013, it was done so with a nod towards things to come, offering a nearly endlessly-customizable two-door coupe that instantly became a favourite of drivers from across the Middle East who craved the Rolls-Royce silky smooth driving experience on a car of that ilk, that they could shape to their every whim and fancy. It also heralded what would come with a more driver-friendly car in the Black Badge Ghost.
The Cullinan caused quite a fuss when it was introduced in 2018, but now that the full-sized SUV has had its time to settle in, it’s a wonder that it took so long to join the pack, as its many additions, such as all-wheel drive, flat-folding rear seats, a tailgate and even floor-mats have shown that true luxury can be built for many terrains, especially in a place such as the Arabian Gulf, the part of the world that has defined the relationship between sport utility and opulence like nowhere else.
The biggest development in the history of the brand, however, is coming in 2023, with the newest car to join the fleet, an all-electric vehicle named Spectre.
Even though we have yet to get a proper look at the car, the car is both a radical shift and a natural progression, especially as brands such as Tesla have helped refine luxury and provide a proof of concept that Rolls-Royce is certain to build and improve upon, especially when it comes to the silence and powerful torque that electric offers, as well as the ever-enticing autopilot that is soon to be perfected and will fit right in with the Rolls-Royce experience.
A Rolls-Royce electric car makes such an extraordinary amount of sense, in fact, that you may wonder why the whole fleet isn’t moving immediately in that direction. In fact, it is, and faster than you may have imagined. By 2030, CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös recently declared, Rolls-Royce will moving the entire portfolio of Rolls-Royce into “full electrification”, laying out the bold claim that the brand will no longer be in the business of producing or selling any internal combustion engine products of any kind.
While that bold move is excellent news for the environment as well as electric car enthusiasts, of which there are more and more every day, as Rolls-Royce moves towards a fully electric future, I’m reminded of camera culture. Before the entire industry moved to digital, it was those last flagship SLRs that harnessed the best of modern technology while capturing the purity of spirit of film, cameras that performed far better than their price point should have allowed—much like the current fleet of Rolls-Royce is doing.
Because those cameras straddled those decades though, camera enthusiasts ignore them. It’s a forgotten era, as perhaps this one will be decades down the line as all cars move to electric. Perhaps the collectors of the future will only be yearning for the classic cars of the 60s and 70s, ignoring the innovations and pleasures therein of the current era.
They would be fools to do so, however. This, especially for Rolls-Royce, will perhaps be its best era, the one that captures the best of what was and the best of what is to come. Bless those crypto kids, if they’re the ones that brought about the Black Badge Ghost. In fact, we should be thankful to those who pushed the brand into the two-door space once again, and those that demanded an SUV at a level we had yet to see.
Rolls-Royce may prove us wrong with an even better future, but it has set a standard with its current fleet that will prove nearly impossible to top.
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