Driving a Rolls-Royce or even owning one, who doesn’t dream about it? Cruising around like a boss on the highways or boulevards, in a Rolls-Royce you can be sure that it’ll be comfortable. Spotter Patrick3331 had the possibility to drive a Rolls-Royce Ghost in Dubai and he made the following report for us. Enjoy it!
First of all I will have to thank my friend, who was so kind to borrow me a brand new 2013 Rolls Royce Ghost in one of the most beautiful color combination that I have seen so far! I mean, would you borrow someone a Rolls Royce that is worth more than you house? His trust was highly appreciated.
Now, coming to the car, well actually this is more than just a car, it is a master piece, leather, wood and the finest materials you can imagine, all in one very spacious limousine. After you have looked at every detailed for some time, which will take you some time as there are so many of them, you start the engine and… nothing! Not that it didn’t work, but it is so quiet that you have to double-check if the engine is really running. What would you do first, you would check the rev-dial, but wait, there isn’t one in the first place. Instead Rolls Royce, very gentleman like gives you a power reserve indicator which works a bit like the Bugatti Veyrons horsepower indicator. The more you push the accelerator the further it travels to the left and shows you how much power you have still left available.
Power, let’s talk about it. The engine, as quiet as a sleeping baby, is so powerful, you can play with other sports cars that are half the size and weight, a 6.6 liter V12 engine with 563bhp @ 5250rpm. The max torque is 780Nm @ 1500 rpm! 0-100 km/h in 4.9 sec with a limited top speed of 250 km/h. Wow! Even more when you take into consideration that the Ghost weights 2435 kg without the driver, so 2.5 tons with a light weight driver!
Ok, enough of the specs, you can read about them online, just search for it. Let me tell you about what the feeling is when you drive a car like this. I would describe it as a feeling like you are a king, honestly, people keep respectful distance to you (especially in Dubai where tail gating is the normality), they smile at you, give space when you need to get in and you have at least 10-20 people looking at you at any time when you are passing by! So, forget privacy in a Rolls Royce, at least as long as you don’t have your windows tinted or you sit in the back where you can close the curtains (optional feature). But let’s be honest, do you want to hide from the outside world when you drive a Rolls Royce? I don’t think so!
Usually when you would get the keys to a Rolls Royce you would be scared to touch something and damage it (having the enormous price tag in mind in case you really damage something). This is what you think even before you start the engine and you drive the first meters with it. Once you start moving you have always the respect for the car, however at the same time you are scared, not that you cause an accident but that someone else crashes into you. You can’t even imagine how many idiots are on Dubai’s roads. Really!
Now the sad thing, if you can even dare to say something like this after having driven a Rolls Royce for a full day, actually it was a day and a half. This wasn’t the first time I drove a Rolls Royce and I can’t remember when my first Rolls Royce experience was. That’s the sad thing! This particular Ghost was the 5th Rolls Royce that I drove for longer (a few hours to 2 days). If I am not mistaken my first RR was a blue 2012 Phantom Drophead Coupe, followed by a bordeaux 2012 Ghost, a black Phantom Limousine, a silver Ghost and this one, in my opinion most beautiful from all of them.
Don’t get me wrong, but after having driven a few of them, which is always a great experience, you do start getting a bit used to them and that is the problem. If I can get used to them so quickly without even having close to enough money to even consider buying one, how does a Multi-Millionaire feel if he has one every day available to drive? Does it really get to a stage where a RR, the ultimate car enthusiasts dream, becomes as normal as a Mercedes E-Class for example (which is already pretty expensive)? I don’t know, but it is a bit scary how fast you can get used to the feeling in a Rolls Royce.
Maybe it’s not that, maybe it’s the sheer number of RR that I see on a daily basis in Dubai, how many RR did I upload on autogespot already? I just checked, 39x RR so far and with this one I hit 40x Rolls Royce! And it doesn’t stop, daily I see more and not always I can take pictures. I guess that over the nearly 6 years I am living in the UAE I must have spotted more than 100x Rolls Royce, maybe even 150x! Just out of this world some might say, but so normal here.
Another thing about my 5th RR experience was the fact, that I couldn’t really enjoy it as much as you might think, purely because I was busy thinking how to place my GoPro Hero3 on the car (always super careful not to damage the beautiful paint job) and where to go to record a very special video about it! I planned this video shot for 3 weeks or so and when I got the car I immediately started recording video footage (of which I managed to get 3-4 hours in total). With the sun setting on the first day I tried to get some beautiful views on the video which didn’t work as well as I was hoping for.
Another problem is where do you park a car that costs close to US $ 250,000.00 overnight when you don’t have a private garage or a house with a fence around it? Luckily I do have an underground garage where I park my car, but before I could park it I had to get down into the parking and with a width of nearly 2 meters it not so easy to get around tight corners, furthermore my car is much shorter and 5.4 meters of British craftsmanship don’t fit in the regular parking lot. So what do you do? Well, you park like an a..hole for one night and occupy 2 parking spots diagonally! Sorry! But to my excuse, out of the 3 levels that are available for parking only 1.5 are occupied, so there is enough space available!
The 2nd day continued like the first one started, busy setting up the GoPro, recording here and there, driving around Dubai and getting the shots right. Not easy as the GoPro got picked up only 2 days earlier and I was still in the learning period, in addition the battery with WiFi turned on lasts only 35-40 min top, which meant returning to “base” to recharge the battery 3 times throughout the day!
In the end I returned the Ghost with close to 280km more on the clock and a lot of video footage that took me 2 weeks to screen and to make one very special short film. A few shots here and there plus the video and a day and a half having one of the best cars that money can buy, overall a superb experience that I will not forget, thanks to the video I will be able to go back in time whenever I wish.
I am planning on another video shot with some more footage from the car itself (outside shots) as I learned a lot during this video shot. Oh, I forgot to mention, everything I had to do myself, driving, setting up the camera(s), recording, re-parking, re-fuelling, cleaning and all the other things! I hope that you guys like the pictures and the video and you can have at least a bit of a experience that I had when I had the car with me.
Thanks a lot for autogespot to feature this short story alongside with some of my pictures and the video.
