While not a thunderously gauche assault on the senses in the manner of, say, an orange Culloden, a Rolls-Royce Wraith coupe is still an immense slab of vehicle; it's a hard car to miss. It's two and a half tons of metal, leather, Wilton wool, wood veneer, and twin-turbo V-12. Over seventeen feet long, with a roofline most of five feet high, it's a coupe of near SUV-proportions.
Introduced for 2014 alongside the Phantom Coupé (Rolls of course sniffily insists on the accented "e"), the Wraith pulled a name from corporate history and eventually supplanted the Phantom. Unlike its predecessor, the enormous grand tourer rides on a platform derived from that of the F07 BMW 7-series sedans.
The clear, oddly shaped headlight lenses on this Midnight Sapphire example tell us it's a 2017-2023 model, after the modest facelift. Earlier ones had rectangular lenses.
Motor Trend tested a 2014 car and claimed the 624 horsepower twin-turbo 6.6L V-12 would launch this rolling landmass to sixty in a mere 4.1 seconds and dispatch the quarter in 12.5 at a buck-fourteen. More impressively, the brakes would stop Rolls's two-door leviathan in only 109 feet from sixty, which must feel like driving into a sand dune.
I was tooling down 54th Street in Indianapolis back in August of 2021 when I noticed this beast in the parking lot at the American Legion hall, so I swung in to get photos with the little Nikon D3000 in the passenger seat.
Notice the Rolls logo is upright on all four center caps? Yeah, they don't spin. I have to replace a couple little roundel center caps on the Zed Drei every few years when they get bounced loose on Indy's bomb-cratered streets. Fortunately the plastic caps on the Bimmer are cheap. I should start keeping a spare or two in the trunk. Hopefully the ones on the Roller are more secure, since a set of four that claim to be OEM goes for seven bills on Amazon.
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