Yahoo Autos The Rolls-Royce Dawn Is Elegance in Excess
IN ROLLS-ROYCE'S MODERN PERIOD, which began with the Phantom sedan in 2003, its cars have gradually veered away from limo-for-the-queen territory. Despite all their bespoke frippery-lamb's-wool carpet, fiber-optic-woven "starlight headliners," lacquered mahogany fold-out tray tables, book-matched veneers-they basically function as muscle cars for insouciant Middle Eastern princes and billionaire Chinese businessmen.
With the 2017 Dawn convertible, Rolls-Royce has leaned in a softer, more elegant direction. Named in homage to the landmark 1950s Silver Dawn, of which Rolls built only 28 examples, this new Dawn has the beauty of old Hollywood, like Grace Kelly showing a discreet bit of leg underneath a ball gown. One model at the launch event, turquoise with a silver accent on the hood [pictured], may be the single prettiest car in the world.
The car I drove, bright red with a creamy white leather interior, was merely the fourth or fifth prettiest car in the world. The Dawn shares its chassis with the Wraith fastback, but 80 percent of the body has been replaced or revised. The windshield is lower and, with the top raised, the roofline is steeper. Silhouetted against the rising sun at a wine estate in Stellenbosch, South Africa, where I picked up the car, the Dawn was striking.
My drive companion for the day was a Spanish lifestyle journalist who is also an architect and a former ballerina. Done up in a headscarf and glamorous La Dolce Vita glasses, she sat beside me luxuriantly. The top, made of six layers of French-seam fabric, rolled down soundlessly in 22 seconds. Rolls-Royce sales literature, in all its pretension, calls this a "silent ballet." It's the backbone of what Rolls-Royce engineers, less pretentiously but with similar grandiosity, claim is the "quietest open-top car ever made." I whispered into the hills of Africa like a feudal lord.
The Dawn, with its twin-turbo 6.6-liter V-12, drives with almost taunting ease. The eight-speed automatic transmission uses GPS data to anticipate gearchanges. The air suspension-double-wishbone front and multilink rear, with active anti-roll bars-carries over from the Wraith. The resulting package is smoother than a Gwyneth Paltrow breakfast recipe.
As a billionaire for the day, I was also perfectly satisfied with the amenities, including an automated butt massager, which a Rolls product manager told me helps with "circulation and road awareness." Still, my very fashionable passenger had critiques, namely that the Dawn needed a lipstick holder and possibly a shoe rack.
These were strange if interesting quibbles, but the whole thing seemed faintly embarrassing, considering the location. We were driving through Cape Town, which, despite being a hot vacation spot for the international elite, is still bordered by vast townships where hordes live in tiny metal shacks under an unforgiving sun. South Africa is the site of continual political turmoil, with an average of one murder every half hour, a rate one politician called "what I would expect from a country at war," backed by a horrific and mostly race-based system of economic inequality that's referred to as "apartheid after apartheid." President Jacob Zuma barely escaped impeachment in April for pilfering the national treasury to pay for renovations to his mansion. He could probably afford a Rolls-Royce Dawn.
I had this in mind as we wafted down the road like officials during the Raj. Little kids ran behind us, cheering and waving sticks. It was cute, but driving a $340,000 convertible straight into the maw of African poverty is enough to give any conscionable person pause.
When we reached a gas station near the coast, a bearded gentleman, with just a hint of an early middle-aged belly, walked around the car carefully, like a shy teen observing a bathing beauty. He wore all black and a silver cross around his neck. Clearly, he was a person of the cloth.
"Is this your car?" he asked. "It is amazing, truly astonishing."
Several Rolls-Royce representatives hovered. I ignored them.
"Do you want to sit in it?" I asked.
He did. His name, he told me, is Lucas, and he is a pastor. I told him to remove his shoes and plunge his feet into the lamb's wool.
"My goodness," he said. "This is special."
"Yes, it is," I said.
"I would like to have one of these beautiful cars."
"Everyone would."
"I believe that I will quit my parish and buy one."
"Don't do that," I said.
"I will take my wife and children and drive away. And I would feel like the luckiest man in the world."
Ten minutes later, after corrupting the sensibilities of a clergyman who, no doubt, tends to thousands of desperate people, I, the actual luckiest man in the world, got back behind the wheel of a deep-red Rolls-Royce convertible, leaning back into the soft leather seats and sighing. I drove at 75 mph along curvy roads, a biosphere reserve to my left, the roiling surf of the Atlantic Ocean to my right. My drive partner curled up in the back seat, napping serenely, like a satisfied house cat. It was a lovely sunset, but I barely noticed. I was too busy thinking about the Dawn.
Rolls-Royce Dawn
Price: $340,000
Powertrain: 6.6-liter twin-turbo V-12, 563 hp, 575 lb-ft; RWD, 8-speed automatic
Weight: 5650 lb
0–60 mph: 4.3 sec
On Sale: Now
