Ghost Hunt

They Say Japanese Car Culture Is Dead, But We Find The Spirit Still Alive – Using One Seriously Special Car

- Andrew Chesterton

AN ABNORMALLY polite nuclear weapon. A velvet-wrapped asteroid smashing into the Earth. No wait, a bear wearing a dinner suit.”

Pushing – really pushing – a 2.5-tonne Rolls-Royce Wraith Black Badge up one of Tokyo’s most iconic mountain roads, all 12 cylinders charging hard as the smell of brakes now cooked past the point of medium-rare and fast approaching welldone wafts into the usually sweet-scented cabin, does strange, warping things to your mind.

Imagine sitting in a plush hotel suite that suddenly and unexpectedly launches into space, for example, or relaxing in a leather-soaked cigar lounge that’s suddenly fired from a cannon. The speed of the scenery whipping past the windows tells you that you’re definitely moving at a substantial clip, but there’s still a sensible part of your brain that insists that what’s happening simply isn’t possible.

And so my scrawled notes of the experience are less a considered insight and more the kind of insane ramblings of someone who might live in a sealed bunker. Which is why we’re left with... a bear wearing a dinner suit.

The truth is, though, it really is like a black-tie bear, all angry and bristling intent hidden beneath an acreage of handpolished paint and soft leather. Because this is a Roller unlike any to have rolled before it.

Money has changed, you see. Or more specifically, the kinds of people with enough money to buy a Rolls-Royce have changed. Where once they were the captains of industry, royals and the old-money rich, the target market has now shifted. Annoyingly, it’s gotten much, much younger.