Bartek Sikorski

Jeremy Clarkson: Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe.
It doesn’t have to do anything but arrive.

The car ad Jeremy Clarkson likes most at the moment: postcards with the caption: Welcome to Sant Agata Bolognese. Home of the Lamborghini. (Work it out)
Someone with a cruel mouth and a spiteful demeanour announced the other day that all car advertisements should carry a government health warning. “Driving while pregnant harms your baby.” “Cars lower your sperm count.” That sort of thing.
This would be a pity because apart from Griff Rhys Jones in his underpants and Mazda’s international zoom-zoom efforts, almost all car advertisements are better than almost all the programmes they help to fund.
It was always thus. Back in the early Sixties television commercials were rammed with smiley people cramming as much information as was humanly possible into the 30-second slot. Prices, ingredients, comparisons. The lot.
Then in 1963 along came an advertisement for the VW Beetle. Written by Bill Bernbach at Dingleberry, Dunkirk and Bedhopper, it showed a pair of headlights picking their way through a blizzard and arriving at a big wooden hut. The doors opened and out came a snowplough. “Have you ever wondered,” asked the voiceover, “how the man who drives the snowplough drives to the snowplough.” And we were left with a picture of the little Bug by the big hut.
It changed advertising for ever because here was a commercial that apparently contained no information at all. But which actually told you more about the Beetle than a million Colgate rings of confidence.
We see this now all the time. Honda has that man with the Mr Kipling gravel in his larynx telling us that it’s nice when things just work. We have Audi telling us something in German that we don’t understand and we have Saabs leaving vapour trails through deserted city streets. “It’s based on a jet fighter,” they tell us. Even though the truth of the matter is that it’s actually based on a Vauxhall Vectra. But never mind.
Lamborghini has a brilliant campaign, as you can see from the pictures. Set in the company’s home town, one shows a cautious woman waiting by a crossing and the other locals protecting their hearing from passing supercars.
But the best, by a mile, has never been shown. Not even in the furthest reaches of the internet. It shows a pair of headlights in a blizzard. But they’re not like the candles in jam jars you found on a Beetle. They are funky, halogenesque with a Daz blue white feel to them. Other than this, it’s pretty much the same as the original Beetle ad. The lights forge a path through the blizzard to a big wooden hut, from which a snowplough emerges.
“Have you ever wondered,” asks the voiceover, “how the man who owns the snowplough gets to the snowplough.” And as the plough breaks frame, we’re left with a shot of the Rolls-Royce Phantom.
It’d be a shame, I think, to clutter up this simple parody with a lot of guff about carbon dioxide and baby seals and how many children in Birmingham have small brains.
Whatever, I don’t know why the ad never made it, even as a viral e-mail. Maybe it’s because Rolls-Royce doesn’t need to advertise. Not when you have Alan Sugar whizzing hither and thither in his Phantom every week on The Apprentice. And on the other side, Simon Cowell doing much the same thing on The X Factor.
Or maybe it’s because there is simply no alternative. The Phantom has the pluto-matic market all to itself. And puh-lease do not introduce the Maybach at this point because while it’s a good and noble thing, it is a first cousin of the Wakefield hen night stretched limo. The Phantom is a first cousin only to the God of silence, and manners, and breeding. It is an exquisite car and I would have one tomorrow if it weren’t so bloody expensive. That and the fact my wife has said she would divorce me. And then kill me with a knife.
And now comes the convertible and, oh deary me. When I came home to find it sitting in my drive, all huge and brilliant, I’m afraid I started to dribble.
Like its hard top brother, this also has no rivals. Well, unless you count the Bentley Azure, which is of course excellent. If you like to waft around in something that can trace its roots back to 1959. Which means you’d be wafting around in something that’s older than me.
The Rolls doesn’t look or feel old fashioned at all. Everything, from the unpainted bonnet to the backwards-opening suicide doors to the rattan carpets and, yes, even the teak Sunseeker-style decking on the back, makes it look as fresh and as futuristic as tomorrow morning’s papers.
Maybe its back end is a bit wonky, but other than this the styling, roof up or down, is just the most inspired piece of automotive design since ever.
And then my wife came home. “Jesus H Christ,” she said. “What is that monstrosity doing here?” An argument ensued. She said it was vulgar. I said she was from the Isle of Man so she’d know. Some doors slammed. And I went for a drive.
Oooh it’s big. Sumo-wrestler big. Eighteen feet long and six feet wide big. But you ignore this and assume that because it’s a V12 convertible it must have some sportiness in its complexion. I did. But it doesn’t. In fact it is hard to think of anything in the world that is less sporty. Mount Fuji, perhaps. But that’s about it.
Part of the problem is that you sit so high. You really can go eye to eye with people in Range Rovers. And that gives you the impression that actually you’re behind the wheel of a drophead truck.
Add to this steering, suspension and a gearbox, all of which feel decidedly American and you very quickly learn to back off and waft. I must say I came home that night a bit disappointed.
The next day we took it to a party in Marlow, me in the driver’s seat and my wife curled up in the passenger footwell in case she was seen. But it didn’t matter, because we weren’t speaking anyway.
This is mainly because we had comprehensively failed to find a way of opening the boot, so she’d put her bags on the back seat and her favourite scarf had blown away. And also, the satellite navigation system – one of the few bits on the car obviously to have been lifted from a BMW – steadfastly refused to acknowledge Marlow existed.
If I’m honest, I was finding it difficult to defend the Drophead. It wouldn’t fit on even the widest high street. It does fewer than 10 miles to the gallon. It has the get up and go of a potato, and a boot, when you do finally get the lid up, that is smaller than the fridge in a caravan. Oh, and it costs £307,000, which means it’s £80,000 more than the Bentley.
I must also say I disliked the wooden dashboard, which appeared to be a bit half hearted. There was a sense that it had been put there because of tradition, rather than because it looked good. It certainly didn’t match the backlit blue dials.
And I have to say that while the seven-layer roof is good when up, the buffeting when travelling with it down is intolerable at anything more than 80. But then we arrived at our party in Marlow and everyone went berserk. I’ve never seen a car cause such a stir, and suddenly the point of the Roller became crystal clear.
It is not built for speed or grip. It is not built to excite with its handling or the roar from its exhaust. It is not built to be safe, or frugal, or cheap. It is not built to do any of the things we have come to expect of cars in recent years. It is not built to go places. It is built to arrive.
This car, then, is not a car at all. It is a fanfare. A blast of trumpeteering to silence the crowds when someone special is about to enter the room. The reason why there’s no advertising for this car is simple. It’s built to advertise you.
Sure, I will admit that in England it is a bit ostentatious, a sunflower in a field of weeds. Arriving anywhere here in such a thing is the same as arriving with a Rolex at an NUM reunion. But arriving in a Drophead at the Oscars or at the casino in Monte Carlo would be more impressive, I suspect, than arriving in Keira Knightley.
And because of this I shall ignore the pleas of my wife. And give it five stars.

Vital statistics
Model Phantom Drophead Coupé
Engine 6749cc, 12 cylinders
Power 453bhp @ 5350rpm
Torque 531 lb ft @ 3500rpm
Transmission Six-speed automatic
Fuel 18mpg (combined cycle)
CO2 377g/km
Acceleration 0-60mph: 5.6sec
Top speed 149mph
Price £307,500
Rating
Verdict Hey, big spender

EnI

Very well said:



This is what RR is all about, and what it has to be about.

888

Absolutelly dream car true kind of car, had it on my desktop for almost year before I replace it with reventon recently

SDNR

Great article .......Clarkson makes it seem ridiculous and wonderful at the same time.

BMW Power

excellent read! Thanks for posting :-)

Giannis

off course it is
JC always has great write-ups

very entairtaining, rather than informative...