Is this a Rolls Royce Wraith?

Yes it is........but with a serious set of aftermarket wheels

 

Saw one for the first time a few days ago. They look rather odd from the rear.

 

I saw one in person last weekend for the first time (at the mall in Orlando, of all places)...it's stunning in person. it has great presence and the form really comes together in 3d (I think some angles look weird in pictures/video).

 

Early morning photo shows off her lines...
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Rolls Royce lent me one for the weekend last week and I put 250 miles on it. Absolutely amazing car in every way.

 

My father just got his this week. Cant believe how much I like the car
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Dan Neil from the WSJ does his take on the new Roller......."The power train is as isolated as North Korea"

March 28, 2014 3:19 p.m. ET
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Rolls Royce Wraith Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal
WHILE IN ENGLAND recently I did questionable things.

You see, I borrowed a car from the Rolls-Royce sheds in Goodwood, West Sussex, for a solo 300 miler on the wrong side of the road. It was the company's new twin-turbo, V12-powered Wraith coupe. Ah, the look of it. I drove the Rolls to Stonehenge to ponder, exactly, which was more of a monument. I drove it to London to speak the mother tongue: money. It is quite the amazing automobile.

WSJ's Dan Neil drove the Rolls-Royce Wraith, trailing clouds of glory in Surrey, England. He joins Lunch Break to tell us about his adventures. Photo: Rolls Royce
But I also had to take pictures, and in a land of gates and fences dating to the Domesday Book, it wasn't proving easy to just pull off the road and fire away. So I gladly followed the signs for some place called Highclere Castle.

I reached the shadowing oaks that marked the drive around 9 on a Sunday morning. The gatehouse cottage was unmanned but there were large signs saying the grounds were closed to the public.

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Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal
I didn't even touch the brakes. The Wraith motored silently onto the 5,000-acre estate—a place of ancient oak forests, whitening drifts of sheep across emerald pastures, and a series of faux-relic follies built in the throes of 18th-century Neoclassicism, like the Temple of Diana rotunda, which encloses the estate's water tower. Highclere Castle turns out to be where they shoot the exteriors for "Downton Abbey."

Yes, I was trespassing, but that isn't the morally dubious part. The greater sin was counting on the fact that the estate's security—or wardens, or sheriffs, whatever—wouldn't harass a stray Rolls-Royce and that they would infer, reasonably, the driver was either a guest or some other moldy lord. I doubt I would have enjoyed the same presumption if I were driving, say, a Ford Focus. If I'd been driving a Skoda Yeti they would have dragged me out and thrashed me for a knave.

I therefore presumed on the car's class privilege, and in so doing dipped my toe in the deep pool of deference—and sinister authority—that comes with these kinds of cars, regardless of where in the world you are. It isn't right. It isn't fair. But it is often observed that the world is rather less than we hoped.

Oh, and I also poached a deer.

“ It is surprisingly hard to get a car that can be called truly bespoke. ”
Based on the Ghost sedan and mechanical kin to BMW's 760il (BMW bought Rolls-Royce in 1998), the Wraith's distinction is its brutal, daringly inelegant fastback that, rather than blending into the top of the rear fender in a smooth, complex form, lands like an artillery shell on the rear deck. Recalling the deep visual language of the motorcar—chassis below and cabin above—the Wraith marries the two volumes at a remarkable, nose-to-tail chamfer.

The car's helmeted roof section and strong delineation at the beltline can be deconstructed thusly: It is about personalization. This design detail encourages the option of a two-tone paint scheme and so exponentially expands clients' choice of colors. This is straight out of the Parisian showrooms of Delage, Figoni and Falaschi, and Bugatti then and now (Veyron). These two-tones can range from Rolls-Royce classics such as coffee and mocha (sober yet delicate); to the kind of paint schemes that make people hate you—chartreuse and mirror chrome, blue and white. Gentlefolk, please: It is an automobile, not a bowling shoe.

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Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
The Rolls-Royce Wraith
Base: $284,900

Powertrain: Intercooled and turbocharged direct-injection DOHC 48-valve V12 engine with variable valve timing; eight-speed automatic transmission; rear-wheel drive.

Horsepower/torque: 624 hp at 5,600 rpm/590 pound-feet at 1,500-5,000 rpm

Length/weight: 207.9 inches/5,380 pounds

0-60 mph: 4.4 seconds

EPA fuel economy: 13/21/15 mpg, city/highway/combined

Cargo capacity: 16.6 cubic feet

The world's legions of newly rich have a problem when it comes to luxury goods, and automobiles are an acute case. It is surprisingly hard to get a car at any price that can be called truly bespoke; personally declarative; if you like, and absolutely exclusive. Ultraluxury car makers have added pages of personalization options—hides, unusual breeds of wood veneer, embroidering, a mind-boggling assortment of audiophile sound systems—and of course any color or combination, all to offer clients a car that is certifiably unique.

Companies such as Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and Aston Martin are only too happy to help clients find themselves, automotive-wise, because, and at the risk of sounding like a crass American: Bespoke = profit. In any event, it is helpful to regard the Wraith's $284,900 MSRP as only the starting point. Ballers must write that check.

I asked my Rolls-Royce guide if ever the company overruled a client's obviously horrid choice of hues. He said, stiffly: "No."

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Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal
Here's something Figoni and Falashi didn't have: The Wraith's roof liner was lighted up like a planetarium dome with hundreds of fiber-optic stars threaded precisely through the leather in a re-creation of the car's natal astrology. That's right: the stars and planets' position over Goodwood on the day in 2003 when the company was reestablished, including their relative degrees of magnitude. Owners may also request their own astrology. I'm a Capricorn, myself.

Now, if there were justice in the stars, the roof liner would also reflect the celestial vault over Bavaria. Much of the machinery below the Wraith's decks—the 6.6-liter, twin-turbo V12, the suspension, chassis and body panels—is made in Germany and shipped to Goodwood for final assembly and trim, the installation of panache. Whether this diminishes the cars' authenticity is a metaphysical question and I am a practical man. Capricorn, you know.

Let's do the walk-around: What you are looking at is the sportiest, the most rakish and roguish, and the most powerful car in the Rolls lineup. The Wraith (splendid name, by the way) is 5 inches shorter than the sibling Ghost and 1.7 inches lower, on 7.2-inch shorter wheelbase.

The design is properly called a four-seat pillarless coupe, with a canopy uninterrupted by roof supports and the DLO (daylight opening) surrounded by a glowing metal bezel. The glory of this car, and the thing that I predict will make it collectible in decades to come, is its bewitching pair of coach doors. Vault-like but precisely balanced for effortless operation, these power-assisted, rear-hinged portals are huge and sumptuously lined with wood veneer like a good suit is lined in silk, and for the same purpose: that moment of un-concealment and delight at the valet stand. One doesn't sit in the Wraith so much as alight in it.

Note: The Phantom Coupe and Drophead Coupe also have these coach doors. Re awesomeness: Ditto.

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In many mechanical respects, the Wraith is the same car as the freshly revised Ghost. The same bi-turbo, direct-injection 6.6-liter V12 producing a nearly mute, North Sea gale of torque: 590 pound-feet from 1,500-5,000 rpm. All that sluices through the same eight-speed ZF transmission. Among other novelties, the Wraith's electronic transmission maintains a GPS fix on the car to optimize and anticipate gear selection—for instance, holding a gear before a curve to avoid unsettling the car with an upshift or downshift.

The powertrain is as isolated as North Korea, no more than a faint rumor of vibration in the seat or the beguiling thin-rim steering wheel. Even at its most passionate, the exhaust only purrs. But when you call upon all 624 hp, and the needle of the white-faced Power Reserve gauge dives toward 0, and the right mink-lined cog moves into place, the Wraith's acceleration is appropriately scary: 0-60 mph in 4.4 seconds, and from there one is lifted as upon a geyser of champagne to an electronically limited, gentlemanly 155 mph to speed.

Like the Ghost, the Wraith uses an air suspension with double wishbone in the front and multilinks in the rear, adaptive damping and active antiroll linkages front and rear. Rolls is careful to stipulate the Wraith is no high-strung sport machine. Agreed, but still, I love the way this handles—the eerie-light, syrupy steering, the large-diameter steering wheel itself. Along narrow lanes the body will move around a bit, to let you know you're driving a 5,380-pound machine, but the big car is never less than firmly planted. Sturdy. Like good British shoes, and food.

 

Better views of the Wraith...
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I like your wheels better. I suppose stock?

Lovely in white as well.

 

Thanks! An option but from the factory. I hate crazy aftermarket wheels....

 

My thread in the owners section has more pictures but this is my favorite feature on the car I had.
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