Key Specs And Standout Details

Rolls-Royce is one of those brands: immediately recognizable as being almost completely unattainable by the vast majority of the population. Brands within this strata — which includes names like Patek Philipe and Gulfstream — have a clientele which leans more towards people with multiple Super Bowl rings or pop singles that have gone platinum, than people who saved up for 30 years to “buy themselves something nice.” That’s what Cadillac is for. Quite frankly, if someone has a Rolls-Royce, they probably aren’t worried about silly things like price.

Advertisement

The chances of anyone who reads this going out to buy a $500,000 car based on an article online is vanishingly slim. I won’t bore you with affordability metrics or buying advice. If you’re within the demographic of people who can afford a Rolls, you likely have access to a team of people who make those kinds of decisions for you. For those of you with more mainstream budgets still curious about life behind the iconic Spirit of Ecstasy, I’m here to tell you what it’s like to drive and experience not just any Rolls-Royce, but some of the newest and the most expensive.

Rolls-Royce, an obsessively British company, is owned by BMW Group these days, so BMW flew me out to its headquarters in Spartanburg, South Carolina to get a small taste of how the other half of the other half lives.

Advertisement

In the parking lot of BMW’s Performance Center, I was greeted by a 2024 Rolls-Royce Spectre, the brand’s electric coupe. On the outside, the Spectre looks impossibly long, and I’m doing my best to describe it using automotive terms and not nautical ones. It’s a hair under 18 feet from front bumper to rear and yet it’s a two-door, so the proportions are ridiculous. It has 23-inch wheels, and yet they don’t look outsized. It’s classy, but it sure isn’t subtle.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the Spectre is that it’s an EV, one with a 102 kWh battery and a dual-motor drivetrain gently exhaling 584 horsepower. Rolls-Royce and the U.S. EPA say that the range is up to 277 miles, assuming you’re willing to sacrifice an inch from those vast rims, although I suspect range figures won’t matter very much to and from trips to the helipad.

Advertisement

While the Spectre’s exterior was finished in Black Diamond, the interior fabric was also black only with purple trim. It gave the car a menacing yet posh appearance, not outside of something you’d expect to see in a Batman comic.

Advertisement

Each Rolls-Royce is the product of hundreds or even thousands of hours of work ensuring it’s perfect — and perfectly unique — for the client. Actually driving the Spectre, though, is not that much of a production, and in fact a lot like every other EV aside from the “shifter” being mounted to the column like every Rolls before it. The only quirk belonged to the Spectre’s doors which are both very long and rear-hinged, meaning that it took some muscle memory to avoid hitting myself with the door when I opened it.

Alex Hevesy/Read

Once I put the Spectre in drive and went off on my merry way, I was astonished at how quiet and cocoon like the cabin is. That’s done entirely by design and only benefits from the nearly silent electric drivetrain. As is the case with most EVs, the acceleration can kind of punch you in the face when accelerating. The Spectre did not follow that trend. It more “progressed” than burn the tires off. That said, Rolls-Royce says it has a 4.4 second 0-60 time, so do with that what you will.

Advertisement

It’s smooth, it’s quiet. I’m not breaking new ground by saying that. Now here are the numbers that might frighten any small children or pets in the room. The 2024 Rolls-Royce Spectre that I drove carried a price tag of $501,325, making it the second most expensive thing I’ve ever driven (the most expensive thing is the next Rolls I drove). It’s more expensive than most of the houses I’ve been in. It’s roughly 100 times more expensive than a used first-generation Nissan Leaf, and 10 times more expensive than most contemporary EVs.

Advertisement

Is the ride quality worth half a million dollars? I have never even been near that sort of money, so I can’t make an accurate decision regarding economic value. However, I can say that it’s probably the most obsessively engineered vehicle I’ve ever driven with regards to the experience you have while driving. The power-assisted rear-hinged doors, the whisper quiet drivetrain, the lambswool floor mats, the column shifter, and everything else contribute cohesively to the experience of driving something really special (and yes, really expensive).

The next Rolls-Royce I captained was gas-powered, a 2025 Rolls-Royce Cullinan Series II. While the Spectre was low and sleek, the Cullinan was tall and boxy, giving more the appearance of a particularly upset piece of gothic architecture than a traditional luxury SUV. Underneath the miles long hood is a 6.75-liter V12 attached to an 8-speed automatic transmission. The engine may generate a hefty 563 horsepower, but figures like that explicitly do not matter to an SUV of the Cullinan’s caliber. You aren’t going to be driving it very fast unless it’s on the way to leave your former country during a coup attempt.

Advertisement

That said, power was absolutely enough for any situation and the automatic transmission made gear shifts entirely imperceptible. I cannot get over how deathly quiet the interior was. It’s almost like the engine didn’t exist. You are the only person who matters to the Cullinan, everyone else is just ancillary.

The Cullinan I was tasked with driving was finished in a new color for the Series II, named “Emperador Truffle.” “Light brown” or “tan” doesn’t have the same ring to it I guess. The interior, where most the of the work goes, was finished in not one, or even two colors. The build sheet lists the interior’s primary color as “Cashmere Grey,” the secondary color as “Chartreuse,” and the tertiary (yes, tertiary) color as “Scivaro Grey.” Prior to driving the Cullinan, I could not have honestly told you what “Scivaro Grey” was.

Advertisement

Alex Hevesy/Read

The two back seats are essentially leather covered recliners and, to a person who thought La-Z-Boy chairs were the epitome of luxury and has never sat in first class on a plane much less a private jet, were almost entirely wasted on me. Between the two seats was a refrigerator complete with adjustable temperature, champagne flutes, and a decanter for whatever you want to imbibe during your African safari/coronation/military hardware parade/etc. Open container laws only apply to other people.

Now for the price. If you thought the Spectre was a tough pill to swallow, the Cullinan is another leather-adorned creature entirely. With its truffle colored exterior and tri-color interior, the 2025 Rolls-Royce Cullinan Series II costs $555,200. In what might be the biggest understatement of my writing career, that’s a lot of money: it even makes a new Ghost Series II look relatively affordable.

Advertisement

I’m having a difficult time figuring out why anyone would spend over half a million dollars on a car like the Rolls-Royce Spectre or Cullinan. Then again, I drive a Chevy Cruze and think Timex makes a nice watch, so maybe I’m not the target demographic.

Like the Spectre, and every other Rolls-Royce, the Cullinan doesn’t really come down to a list of features (although the list of bells and whistles would fill a book), it’s all about how the whole package not only cossets you, but leaves you feeling like you deserve every moment of that.