Rolls’ bewitchingly good Dawn boasts a plethora of detail. Here are the best bits:
The roof
Rolls would never tolerate a folding hard-top roof – imagine how big the Dawn’s back side would be – so canvas it is. But not any old canvas. This roof features six layers, and has what’s called a ‘French seam’ for maximum sound insulation. It folds away in 22 seconds into a space similar in size to the area a BMW 2-Series convertible’s roof disappears into, and can do so at speeds up to 30mph. That’s Olympic gold medal-winning levels of showing off. It also does its thing in complete silence. A ‘silent ballet’, says Rolls. Except that ballet dancers make more noise, as they shuffle and squeak about the stage.
The doors
Yes, we’ve seen these rear-hinged doors before on various Rolls models. But time will never diminish their impact as a piece of purest street theatre. There’s also an engineering bonus here: if the Dawn was fitted with regular, proletarian doors, it would have needed even more reinforcement around the bulkhead. As it is, the extra bracing adds 200kg to the car’s weight, so that it tips the scales at 2,560kg. Lord knows what Rolls’ upcoming SUV will weigh. Perhaps the same as Mount Everest.
The engine and the way it goes
Again, nothing new to see here. But seriously, how can you argue with a 563bhp, 6.6-litre twin-turbo V12? If anything, the ‘nose-up tail-down’ manner in which it accelerates is even more pronounced in the open-top Dawn. It’s so effortless and cool it doesn’t feel right to lean on it when you could waft. But if you do, it gathers pace with the relentlessness of a space rocket on lift-off.
The transmission
Like Wraith, the Dawn’s ZF eight-speed gearbox works off GPS to read the road ahead. Depending on your driving style, it’ll pick the right gear for an approaching corner. In other words, should you be in something of a hurry, it’ll hold onto third gear.
The design
They could have just chainsawed the roof off the Wraith. But pretty much everything on the Dawn has been reworked, and 80 per cent of the car’s panels are new. The windscreen has a faster rake, the glass area is shallow, and the body-to-wheel ratio – depsite the size of said body and the humungous wheels – is absolutely spot-on. It looks like a latter-day Al Capone hot rod, or the sort of thing Jay Gatsby would have luxuriated around in. This is the work of some very keen design minds indeed. Although you can always undermine their work by choosing a questionable colour.
The coach line
It’s a £1,000 option and hand-painted by a bloke in Goodwood called Steady Eddie