Want the beautiful lines of a coupe?
Need eye-peeling performance? Comfortably in the higher tax bracket? Then step
this way, sir...
As odd as it may seem in our Best Cars
celebration, it doesn’t take long behind the wheel of the Wraith to work out
that this is no mere car.
The view ahead across the acreage of bonnet
and the way its prow rises under acceleration is pure powerboat. The blend of
analogue and digital inside, amid the finest wood and leather the world’s
forests and fields can provide, is luxuriously steampunk. Glide down a motorway
on-ramp, and the Rolls almost hovers past the rest of the world, like an Art
Deco spaceship.
The
Mercedes-Benz S63 is the fastest variant of Merc’s stylish CL successor
Yes, the corrosive Yewtree whiff of fallen
Seventies television celebrity might still hang over the Rolls-Royce brand, but
blimey has BMW done a good job of repurposing the Spirit of Ecstasy. It really
is in a class of its own for imperious majesty, assuming that’s your thing.
There’s also a 624bhp twin-turbo V12 in the vicinity, but it’s so powerfully
unobtrusive it’s like having an SAS-trained butler at your beck and call.
Mercedes-Benz, of course, tried to conjure
similar magic out of Maybach, relaunched via Concorde and the QE2 shortly
before Rolls-Royce was reborn with the Phantom in 2003. But they ended up with
the cast of Dragons’ Den instead of Jay Gatsby, and it’s fallen to the S-Class
to do the heavy lifting once again. The range is now spread across a variety of
versions, long and short, with airline flatbed rear seats, Ottomans, Swarovski
crystal headlights, an in-built perfume dispensary and Lord knows what else to
tempt the deep-pocketed.
The
Rolls-Royce Wraith is in a class of its own for imperious majesty
To be honest, for all its superiority, I’ve
long been suspicious of the German car industry’s concept of luxury. Well,
nobody’s perfect, and it’s not something you can tackle empirically, either.
Can the S63 introduce a classical flourish to the relentless techno beat?
Naturally, as the new ‘supreme pinnacle’ of the range, it’s packed to the
gunwales with technology, which will make for an interesting experience, come
MOT test time in 2034. Actually, the S Coupe will prove equally interesting in
the wilds of Wales in 2014, as we’re about to find out.
If the Rolls is the circa $417,275 car and
the Merc the $208,635 technocrat, then the $100,145 Jag F-Type Coupe V6S is,
relatively speaking, the bargain (not a word generally associated with it till
now). It’s here not because we’re comparing like with like – as random as we
can be, our maths isn’t that bad – but because it’s arguably the year’s most
beautiful car. It enters an arena worth a piffling 70,000 sales globally per
year, so even if it is a hit it’ll do bugger all for Jaguar’s bottom line. But
that’s not the point. It’s effectively the new E-type, the car that has haunted
Jaguar’s every waking moment since 1975. Its curves have curves.
The
F-Type swaps a compliant ride for great body control
In fact, as I navigate the Wraith into
Telford services on the M54 (I had my people phone ahead to organise a
welcoming committee), there’s a white F-Type Coupe in the car park. There are
two blokes beside it, practically falling over themselves to get a better look,
and engaging in a prime piece of car-park philosophising. It’s precisely the
impact this thing was designed to have. It’s only when I spot TG office
stalwart Rowlesy chowing down on a Burger King 20 feet away that I realise this
is our F-Type, which ruins the effect somewhat.
I really, really wanted to meet the person
who didn’t buy a Porsche Cayman or 911.
