Rolls-Royce Black Badge Wraith defines cool
With its latest offering, automaker makes statement: stuffy is out, edgy is in
NEW YORK— The Chelsea district on Manhattan’s West Side is a warren of historic warehouses — flat-faced, featureless structures punctuated with large metal doors hiding ancient freight elevators whose multi-floor travels, when added up over the decades, would encircle the globe.
Ah, but it’s not all fumes and fork lifts in this gentrified part of NYC. I’m picking my way west along 26th St. to the Canoe Club where Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is hosting a pre-New York Auto Show private reveal of its new Black Badge Wraith coupe.
It’s dark in here, everyone and everything is terminally cool, and there’s not a string quartet or ascot tie to be found. Just pounding dance club music and free-flowing Moet.
The raven Wraith rolls out on big black wheels, looking spectacularly pissed off. The Ghost sedan also gets this treatment, but that car is jetting off to Europe, we hear.
Consider these two “permanent bespoke” variants to be the Ghost and Wraith’s evil twins — a pair of brooding turbocharged 12-cylinder creations that mark a diverging tangent for the world’s most famous purveyor of superluxury automobiles.
Rolls-Royce is broadcasting to the nouveau riche that it’s getting its freak on.
With Black Badge, stuffy is out and badass is in. According to Torsten Muller-Otvos, who has been at the helm of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars since 2010, “Black Badge appeals to those people who are elusive and defiant, the risk takers and disrupters who break the rules and laugh in the face of convention.”
Cited among inspirational personnel are Howard Hughes, Sir Malcolm Campbell, Yves Saint Laurent, Charles Rolls, Muhammed Ali and Who drummer Keith Moon (who never had a driver’s licence).
So what does it take to turn the stately Ghost and swoopy Wraith all nasty? Let’s start with the iconic Spirit of Ecstasy (Flying Lady) figurine. Here she is rendered in shiny black, which in the words of Giles Taylor, director of design at R-R, “mutates her into a high-gloss black vamp, proudly scything through the nighttime cityscape.”
Additionally, all the normal chrome bits turn black, and the hand polished paint and lacquer finish on these specimens looks deep enough to sink a freighter.
Unique to the Black Badge cars: lightweight carbon fibre wheels with forged aluminum hubs.
Don’t look for any of the traditional wood veneer in here. These bad boys are fitted with aerospace-grade aluminum-threaded carbon fibre composite surfacing. Threads of aircraft grade aluminum just 0.014mm in diameter are painstakingly woven together before being bonded with carbon fibre.
Other bespoke touches include blackened air vents and a unique clock with orange-tipped hands.
The black leather upholstery (from select high-altitude German bulls) combines with tailored purple (Ghost) and cobalt blue (Wraith) to add some zing. Overhead, the night sky twinkles, courtesy of the starlight headliner.
Black Badge is not only about looking the part. Rolls-Royce has imbued this pair with revised air suspensions, bigger front brakes, more aggressive transmission mapping and a bit more juice from their mighty 6.6L twin-turbo V12 engines.
The Ghost gets a bump of 40 horses and 44 lb.-ft. to 603 hp and 620 lb.-ft. The Wraith’s horse-count remains at 624 but torque is up 52 lb.-ft. to a seismic 642 lb.-ft.
Naturally, this wafer thin slice of “defiant, disruptive risk-takers” will also be packing a freight elevator full of disposable income. The “standard” Wraith and Ghost start at about $300,000 (U.S.), so look well north of that for a nicely appointed Black Badge. Freelance writer Peter Bleakney is a frequent contributor to Toronto Star Wheels. For this story, his travel and other expenses were paid for by the manufacturer. To reach him, email wheels@thestar.ca and put his name in the subject line.