Black Heart

More torque, quicker responses, increased agility and sinister detailing; just don’t call the Black Badge sporty

- Sirish Chandran

ROLLS-ROYCE DOES NOT do sporty. Period. Charles Rolls might have raced his cars way back in the day but the Rolls Royce of today just does not do sporty. There’s nothing as unseemly as a ‘Sport’ button on a Rolls. The steering wheel remains thin-rimmed and rather large in diameter. You get woods and leathers, not aluminium and carbon fibre. All you hear of the all-mighty V12 is a faint bit of woofling. There’s no one-make Rolls-Royce racing series. No one, ever, put a roll-cage in one. Everything about a Rolls is geared towards opulence; for wafting across continents in unparalleled luxury.

Except here’s a Rolls that is… now how do I put this delicately… sporty. Bitchin’ as the rappers who buy Rollers and slap on big-ass dubs would, more appropriately, put it. You see RollsRoyce were tired of their customers murdering their beautifully wrought cars so they decided to do something about it. Enter the Black Badge bespoke program. Available on the Wraith and Ghost (albeit only in short wheelbase form) the Black Badge edition cars are for “disruptors (their words, not mine) untrammelled by social convention”. A Rolls for “young men in a hurry” – late twenties to early forties, would you believe! – who grind in hip-hop videos and star in reality shows (my words, not theirs). A Black Badge Wraith is a pimped out Wraith, tastefully and elegantly pimped out, never mind the obvious contradictions in what I’m saying.

Any colour as long as it is black

Not really. Such is the breadth of Rolls-Royce’s bespoke program that you can have your Black Badge in any colour, even matched to the favourite nail polish of the lady friend currently in favour. But it looks best in black, totally wicked if I might say so.