Rolls Royce Drophead Coupe – Ship Ahoy!

We get umpteen calls and emails every day (and I do mean every day – weekends, bank holidays, the lot. The petrol-head never sleeps!) from people looking for their perfect car. But one call recently made me sit up and take notice when I saw the call logs. A nice chap (because that’s what it said on the call sheet – and he was!) had called in asking if we had a Rolls Royce Drophead Coupe for sale. By the time I saw the call logs Hugh and the team had sprung in to action and sourced a beautiful Black one at a very good price, and we already had one very happy customer. But I’ve never driven one, so I was on a mission to make sure I delivered the car (not something I do every day – but this was a real exception).
In the Rolls Royce blurb for the Drophead Coupe, they make great play of its nautical infulences. Now to be honest, I’d put this down to the usual manufacturers over-hyped marketing. But when you see the car you do know what they mean. All that beautifully detailed wood at the back, and the graceful lines, really do put you in mind of those racing yachts of the 1930s. All style and polish and grace. Absolutely wonderful. Mind you, it did cross my mind it might drive like a boat! Thankfully, once I got behind the wheel, that thought soon disappeared.

Driving a customer’s car is a very different kettle of fish to playing with a test car. A test car is there to be used (and sometimes abused) to see what it is really capable of. But that is a very big no-no when you’re in a customers car (which is probably why I never go near customers cars normally!). So this was going to be a cautious drive, not ridiculously so, but always cognisant of the fact that this was a customers car (to be fair, the customer did know I was delivering the car and was OK with whatever I wanted to do – but that’s not the point).

Despite the fact that this car echoes every outdated Rolls Royce tradition, from suicide doors to the yachting teak at the back, it still conspires to be bang up to date. It is huge though and, at over eighteen feet long and six feet wide, it’s not a car to park in the multi-storey. You also sit up very high – as high as you do in a 4×4 – which does make you feel enormously superior, which of course is the point. Does it go? Does it handle? Well, yes and no. That’s a cop-out I know, but the whole style of the car doesn’t make you want to hustle along. It’s built to waft, and waft it does, with a wonderful, imperious serenity. But it will pick up its skirts and hustle. After all, it has a big V12 under the bonnet and will hit 60 in under 6 seconds, so it’s far from slow. This car is all about the big occasion. It’s not for popping to Waitrose or taking the kids to the park. It’s about arriving at the Kodak Theatre on Sunset to pick up a little gold statue, or wafting along the Croisette in Nice. This car says you’ve arrived – wherever you arrive. There is nothing else like it. Thank goodness Rolls Royce make it. The world’s a better place for it.