What is the definition of luxury in
2014? Something beyond mere expense and fragrant leather...
“Who would have thought thirty years ago
we’d all be sittin’ here, drinking Château de Chassilier?” Quite! Who would
have thought 47 years ago we’d all still be finding something to laugh at in
Monty Python’s ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ sketch? That we still do is because at its
heart is a truth, and that truth is this: whether it’s a bottle of Château de
Chassilier or a paper bag in a septic tank for a home, each and every one of us
has our own ideas of what constitutes ‘luxury’, shaped by our own lives – those
we’ve lived and those we hope to live.
The
Rolls-Royce Phantom comes with opulence befitting the huge price tag. It is the
benchmark for ride quality
It won’t have escaped your notice that
there’s a lot more money around these days, and although statistics (and only
statistics, there’s no judgement here) suggest your share of it is actually
getting smaller, personally you might just be feeling that little bit more
secure and allowing yourself to dream that little bit more, revising-up your
aspirations for your next car. And because it’s something that you want maybe
rather than something you need, it will necessarily be something of a luxury.
To you, that is. But to anyone else?
All three cars on these pages are certainly
luxurious – the Rolls-Royce, the Mercedes-Benz and, yes, the Skoda (it might be
born of a Passat but is possessed of a far more accommodating gait and is
trimmed with a precision you would not have found on a ‘traditional’ luxury
German car 20 years ago). You might then be expecting me to follow that with a
statement that only one is a luxury car, but I’d argue none of them is, such is
the pace and ceaseless mutability of luxury.
The
S-class's hushed, cosseting ride is exemplary
Don’t believe me? Look at some of the
Phantom’s more immediate predecessors. Unless yours is a deeply ironic, knowing
take on luxury, you wouldn’t tell me a 1980 Silver Spirit – ungainly,
unreliable and championed by the kind of ‘UK showbiz’ set about which we read
rather a lot right now – is a luxury car? I’d rather drive the Skoda; there’s a
noble honesty to it. (Vaclav Laurin and Vaclav Klement were engineering
automobiles in Czechoslovakia in the Twenties with the same sense of craft as
Charles Rolls and Henry Royce were in the UK. Skoda’s relationship with the
name is no more indirect than is BMW’s with Rolls-Royce.)
The
Skoda Superb is a visual standout from every angle, inside and out
But although in some markets – South Korea
certainly, China and Japan less so but for very different reasons –
well-appointed but less ostentatious carriages like the Superb are regarded as
the only acceptable form of luxury car, it’s a hard sell here in the UK. We’re
just too darn aspirational. We’re also the most appalling label snobs: take a
look at the hordes pouring out of the Bond Street or Westfield stops on the
London Underground looking to further load up their credit cards on a Burberry
Trench. It’s so much more than just a new coat they are looking to put on.
The
Phantom’s cabin is the last word in elegance and opulence
Mercedes-Benz knows this better than most.
Recognised in more places than David Beckham, Mercedes is as much in the
business of selling luxury as it is of selling luxury cars. The latest S-Class
is matchless both for the majesty of that effortlessly alpha coachwork and the
technology it contains. Mercedes-Benz S-Class cars, like Range Rovers or
Porsche 911s define their class and are expected to dominate it, selling in
enormous numbers and equally inflated margins. It’s how they can guarantee such
enormous development budgets.
But even in Germany there is no such thing
as a free lunch. Those sales aspirations mean S-Classes have to sell. I
challenge anyone not to feel that teeny bit less impressed by a new S-Class for
seeing one parked on a plinth outside a dealer in Slough, tall, bright plastic
numbers on the front door baiting the passing business user with a ‘try me’ tag
of £399 per month. Isn’t luxury supposed to live somewhere beyond money?
Once
you’re inside, the S-Class starts to shine as it has one of the nicest,
user-friendly cabins in its class
Which just leaves the Phantom, well over 10
years old now and – in the presence of its sexy stepsister the Wraith – looking
more than ever a totem of an other-worldly sense of wealth and privilege, truly
a world apart. It’s not hard to make the case – subjectively or objectively,
even – for the Phantom as the luxury car of the moment. There is no more
indulgent car. But I sense that even Rolls-Royce itself knows this won’t always
be the case; luxury is finding a new definition again.
The Wraith is one clue to what this might
be. Rolls’s customers have been pushing the boundaries of taste from the get-go
in 2003. Rather than snub them, R-R’s designers have embraced them, creating,
in the Wraith, a completely unexpected profile that’s very, very different from
the Ghost on which it’s based.
The
Superb's well-appointed cabin has a classy and upmarket feel
It’s an indication of a growing need for
the 21st-century’s hordes of new-born billionaires to express themselves more
freely in their choices of homes, boats, planes, clothes and lifestyle. And
while the car biz’s capacity to create wholly bespoke cars remains
infinitesimal (single figures inside an industry making 80 million), they’ll
gravitate towards the more iconoclastic. “Take the best that exists and make it
better” might have worked 100 years ago, but who decides what actually is
better will increasingly no longer be the manufacturer. Aye, now that’s luxury.
