Rolls-Royce Spectre 2023 review

In 1976, a group of upstart winemakers from the Napa Valley, near San Francisco, entered their best bottles of chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon into a blind taste test. In what became known as the Judgement of Paris, a panel of French experts ranked the Californian wines higher than their homegrown Bordeaux and Burgundies. Retold in the 2008 film Bottle Shock, the story challenged preconceptions and overturned the accepted order. 

Basking in the Napa Valley sunshine, the Rolls-Royce Spectre aims to achieve something similar. The British marque’s first electric car – and arguably the first true luxury EV – it signals the beginning of the end for the V12 engine. By 2030, every new Rolls-Royce will be electric. 

“Frankly, it would have been easier to electrify an existing SUV or saloon,” says director of engineering, Mihiar Ayoubi. Instead, his team at Goodwood started afresh, creating an elegant and imposing fastback inspired by the Phantom Coupe. The bruised pink Morganite hue seen in these press photos is a bit ‘FAB 1’ for my liking, but design chief Anders Warming says it’s his favourite paint colour. Californians seem to like it, too.

Stars, no stripes

Warming calls the Spectre “generously proportioned”. In reality, it’s enormous – some 423mm longer than a Range Rover – with huge rear-hinged ‘coach doors’ and 23-inch alloy wheels. Nonetheless, a drag coefficient of 0.25 makes this the most aerodynamic Rolls-Royce ever. Even the famous Spirit of Ecstasy bonnet mascot has a sleeker, more streamlined profile. 

The Spectre’s 102kWh battery is mounted skateboard-style, underneath the deep-pile lambswool carpets. Driving front and rear electric motors, it serves up 584hp, a mighty 662lb ft of torque and 0-62mph in 4.5 seconds. However, a range of 329 miles seems underwhelming, given the Mercedes-Benz EQS ekes out 453 miles from a 107.8kWh battery. Topping up from 10-80 percent takes 95 minutes using a typical 50kW public charging point.  

Unlike most coupes, the Spectre can accommodate four adults in comfort, even if you’re sitting behind somebody tall. From behind the wheel, there’s little to suggest this is an EV: just the familiar mix of hand-crafted veneers, tactile analogue controls and slick, BMW-derived infotainment. Among the new options are Starlight Doors, which illuminate your elbows with 4,796 individual fibre optic ‘stars’. No, I didn’t count them all.

Enjoy the silence

In regular Rolls-Royce fashion, the Spectre has a column shifter to engage Drive. But what happens next takes me by surprise: it’s genuinely, uncannily soundless. The venerable V12 was hardly shouty, of course, but this is the quietest car I’ve ever driven. You can select a synthetic, space-age whoosh when you accelerate, but why bother? Just enjoy the silence.

The Spectre is also a fine exponent of Rolls-Royce’s ‘magic carpet ride’, Its Planar suspension system decouples the anti-roll bars when travelling in a straight line, helping the car to resist pitch and squat. Ayoubi talks of the “champagne test”, ensuring passengers don’t spill a drop of Bollinger (or Californian chardonnay, perhaps) when their chauffeur does the driving. 

On sinuous mountain roads that climb into the Palisades, though, you can’t completely escape the Spectre’s 2,890kg kerb weight. While the Bentley Continental GT uses 48v electric motors to counteract roll and seemingly defy physics, the Rolls prefers not to be rushed. That’s fine in a Phantom, but I’d expect a coupe to feel more poised and planted. Maybe the forthcoming Black Badge Spectre will redress the balance.

A true Rolls-Royce

Napa County is still a place where tradition and new thinking collide. Here, battered pickup trucks and brawny muscle cars share space with high-end EVs from Rivian, Lucid and Tesla.

The Spectre feels right at home – and will doubtless be popular with the tech millionaires of nearby Silicon Valley. It could have been bolder in terms of its drivetrain and dynamics, but it raises the bar for refinement. It’s the Rolls-Royce of electric cars.

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