Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead

The Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead is the type of car most of us will never be able to park in our driveways, which makes watching reviews like this latest clip from Top Gear the only chance to get an idea of what it would be like to own one.

Rolls-Royce doesn’t manufacture cars. It hand crafts motorcars. Similarly, the two-door open-air version of the Phantom sedan is no mere convertible, but a drophead coupé. No matter what you call it though, it is a striking automobile to behold. The styling evokes traditions of past Rolls-Royce cars without slumming the retro ghetto. The wood is plentiful, the chrome finishes are mirror-like, and every interior surface that isn’t wood or metal is covered with hides from a small herd of identical cattle. You don’t drive this car, you motor.

This Rolls-Royce is an ostentatious car. Even the name—Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupé is pretentious. Puhleese. Call it a Roller Convertible, and be done with it, already. It sounds like an entry at the Westminster dog show.



The affectations start early and are deliberate. Only 200 a year will be built, 40 percent of which will come here, and the first year’s allotment is sold out. Why, of course it is! Its price is a cool half-mil when the teak decking, stainless-steel hood and chromed, oversized wheels are bespoken and befitted with tax, license, destination and gas-guzzler tariff. That doesn’t account for the shooting locker, humidor or wine cellar they’ll gladly fit should you desire. Throw in another $30 grand, and you can have a gold Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament (and who wouldn’t want that?). Niiiice.

Even though we've known the Phantom Drophead Coupe has been coming ever since Rolls-Royce unveiled the convertible 100EX concept three years ago, the sight of one out here in the real world is still enough to drop the jaw. From its sweeping profile to its striking face with that angled, jutting radiator, Rolls' second new product since BMW bought the name in 1998 sees the company still in no mood for understatement. It is ostentatious like no other car on the road, the most visible declaration of wealth on four wheels.

But if any car can get away with this, surely it is one with the Spirit of Ecstasy riding high on its nose. For when you get past the overtness of its detailing, such as the stainless steel bonnet, teak deck (both technically optional but, to date, with a 100% take-up) and those gimlet-eyed headlamps, what remains is a magnificently imposing vehicle. For any other car manufacturer, it would be too brave an approach, but for a Rolls it seems natural and conspicuously desirable, which is perhaps just as well given its £305,500 price tag.

Get beyond its DC Comics appearance and what lies beneath is almost pure Phantom. Sure there's 25cm taken out of the wheelbase but it's still the same spaceframe chassis, beefed up in key areas to replace most of the rigidity lost in the decapitation process. Overall it weighs just 70kg more than the Phantom, a tribute to how hard the engineers have worked to keep its weight down. Even so, at 2,620kg, it's not going to be winning slimmer of the year any time soon. The engine is the same 6.75-litre V12 with the same 453bhp, its gearbox an unchanged ZF six-speed automatic. Rolls calls the car a full four-seater, more of which in a minute.

There is only one car capable of mounting credible opposition to the Phantom Drophead Coupe and it is Bentley's more powerful, more spacious £222,500 Azure, which has everything the Rolls has except perhaps the most important thing of all in the rarefied world of the ultra-high luxury convertible: an unrivalled sense of occasion.