The Spirit of Ecstasy has landed

When I started out as a motoring journalist 12 years ago, I had a pretty short bucket list: drive a Ferrari and arrive in a Rolls Royce. The first one I have done, and then some, while the latter took me over a decade to reach when it finally happened last month in Vienna.

I was invited to the international media drive of the all-new Rolls Royce Wraith––the most powerful Rolls ever built––along the most breath-taking mountain roads in Austria. Yet as intoxicating as the thought was, I’m not sure what excited me more: driving the Wraith for 300 kilometers or being driven to and from the airport in a Ghost. Both are opportunities of a lifetime, but one is so deeply buried in cliche that it would be blasphemous to not suck it all in like a tourist having his shot taken at the Eiffel tower on his first visit to Paris.

And let me just tell you that being fetched in a Rolls Royce is completely different to knowing you’re going to be fetched in a Rolls Royce. Although it may be a painfully diluted analogy, it is similar to being upgraded to business or first class at the gate, rather than knowing all along that you will be traveling that class to begin with.

There’s just a certain swagger about you. Like holding a royal flush. The odds of someone else trumping you are zero to none. Yes there are more expensive options, but none quite as exclusive. It is one of the rare times when it is not all about the journey or the destination, but almost solely about the arrival simply because you could answer almost any question with finality by it. “Who is that over there?” “I don’t know. But he arrived in the latest Rolls Royce.” I rest my case. It is a statement. An unparalleled benchmark of luxury. Something that can be summed up by Richard Carter, Rolls Royce Motors Global Director of communications, when I asked him who the main competitors of the Wraith were during

his presentation in the Palais Coburg in Vienna. “A private jet, a yacht, perhaps.” He said without the slightest hesitation in an equally expensive British accent that could have flowed naturally from Roger Moore’s lips.

Such is the enigma of arriving in a Rolls Royce.

Once the Ghost pulls up to the hotel driveway and the gloved hand leans in to swing open the suicide doors, the world stops for a moment and cranes its head to catch a glimpse of who it is that is worthy enough of the fairy tale. I may not know a soul out here but I play the part carefully, knowing full well that this role, however fleeting it may be, is a defining one.

And that is the magic of Rolls Royce. It has become the generic term for “It doesn’t get any better than this.” If you were to say, “It is the Rolls Royce of chocolate.” It carries a certain finality that can never be intelligently debated. And now the Philippines joins the growing list of countries that can truly say they have arrived after Rolls Royce Motor company’s global CEO, Torsten MüllerÖtvös, officially inaugurates the operations of the new dealership in BGC later this afternoon.

This will be the first time the CEO of Rolls Royce Motor Cars will have visited the Philippines. Accompanying Müller-Ötvös is a senior team from the company’s board of directors and regional executives: Mr. Jolyon Nash, global director of Sales and Marketing; Richard Carter, global director for Communications; Paul Harris, Asia Pacific regional director, Herfried Hasenoehr l , general manager, Emerging Markets Asia.

So as they raise their glasses, we here at the Philippine STAR would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Autohub group for this milestone in Philippine automotive history and wish them all the best because although we already have very exclusive brands here, nothing quite captures the art of arrival like Rolls Royce.