A Rolls-Royce In Its Purest Form

With its first electric car, the Spectre coupe, Rolls ditches its famous V-12 engine and finds out who it really is.

- By Hannah Elliott

Not many cars can persuade my editor to buy me a rather expensive plane ticket and send me 10,000 miles around the world to drive it for one day. But when Rolls-Royce said I could be the first driver outside the company to test its first-ever electric vehicle, I started looking for my passport.

That’s how I ended up in South Africa, behind the wheel of the 2023 Rolls-Royce Spectre. After rolling around its viridescent wine country, I found the estimated $500,000 coupe to be smoother, quieter and more powerful—not to mention better looking—than any of its V-12 predecessors. The 118-year-old brand has tied its mythology to its famously huge combustion engines, but this initial step into electrification is bold and sure-footed, a two-door titan that saturates its passengers in indulgence. It signals a smooth transition ahead.

The car I drove is a preproduction prototype, shipped way (way) down south for final hot-weather testing. When I laid eyes on it in an immaculately manicured vineyard, its grand stance—nearly 18 feet long and more than 6 feet wide— communicated a sense of occasion. This is what you get when money is no object but you still have a good British sense of restraint and refinement. Spectre’s long fastback shape most approximates the rare Phantom Coupé made from 2008 to 2016, though this is a vehicle designed from scratch, not derived from anything else. (Rolls-Royce developed the battery and motors with parent company BMW AG, then refined them.)