By Gareth Butterfield 
Picture the scene: You’re in one of the most beautiful areas of Britain, in one of its most fabulous hotels, and a guy waves a leather-clad key at you that unlocks one of the finest cars ever built and tells you to be back in 45 minutes. I’ve had worse days.
I’m on the edge of Nidderdale which, no arguments please, is one of the country’s most beguiling outposts. At the southern tip of the Yorkshire Dales, it’s laced with lovely roads, littered with picturesque, remote farms, and intertwined with narrow country lanes. And a chap I’ve only just met has given me access to an almost three-tonne car which is moderately close to six metres long and has a width of more than two metres.
I’m nervous, pant-wettingly nervous, as I thread this massive motor through the narrow exit road of the stunning Grantley Hall Hotel, where the nice people from Rolls-Royce Motor Cars have pitched up for the day, to invite some motoring journalists to drive their new Black Badge Spectre.
The briefing I was given before easing my embarrassingly badly-healed posterior into this festival of leather and lambswool was rather short, but nevertheless useful.
Because, it turns out, there isn’t a lot to understand about a modern Rolls-Royce, but a ridiculous amount to take in. And the only way to truly take it in is to go out for a drive. Which is exactly what I did.
Threading such a gargantuan car through the narrow lanes and weak bridges close to the hotel was a leap of faith. Gateways seem narrower, walls seem to leap out at you, and cars pass by alarmingly closely.
The Rolls-Royce Spectre is Rolls-Royce’s widest car, at least in terms of door span. And it’s also one of the heaviest in the fleet, largely because it’s powered solely by electricity.
And that thoroughly contemporary method of propulsion isn’t the extreme culture shock you might expect because, in any Rolls-Royce, you can’t really hear the drivetrain anyway.
What does come as a bit of a shock is the way this car accelerates. Because the new Black Badge version has an absolutely absurd amount of power.
You might assume it’s vulgar to talk about power output in a Rolls-Royce. But gone are the days when journalists were just instructed to put the word “adequate” in the box marked “BHP”. This special edition of the Spectre coupe is all about its power. The “Black Badge” element is, after all, an iteration developed to lure in younger buyers who like a bit of individuality – and lots and lots of power.
So I’ve been given official permission to say this special Spectre has 650bhp. And I’m even allowed to tell you that 73bhp of that is unlocked by putting it in a special driving mode. Only it’s not a “sport” button, perish the thought. In the Black Badge Spectre, if you want to go from the standard 577bhp to the full 650bhp you press a subtle button on the steering wheel that enters the car into “Infinity” mode, which is exclusive to the Black Badge series.
And then, in case your 650bhp just isn’t enough, Rolls-Royce has another 10 purebred Arabian horses saddled and ready to go if you harness the rather vivid launch control system. Only, we mustn’t call it launch control. Rolls-Royce likes to refer to it as “spirited mode”. I’m actually delighted there’s still some good, old-fashioned grandiosity going on.
The Black Badge treatment isn’t all about power, though, however adequate the amount it has is. It’s also about personalisation. Speccing up a Spectre in this trim is a process that should take days, rather than hours, because pretty much any choice you want to make is open to you. If you can afford it, almost nothing is off the table.
It can make for some rather lurid colour combinations, but Rolls-Royce seems only too happy to let the Instagram set loose on its finest machines these days, and there’s not a lot the purists can do about it.
The car I was given to test was daubed in a reasonably sober and subtle purple, with plenty of black accents that extended to the forward-leaning Spirit of Ecstacy emblem, and some imposing 23″ forged wheels with a part-polished finish.
I’m not sure you’d describe the Spectre as a thing of beauty, but it’s certainly formidable. And the Black Badge treatment just adds some purpose and attitude.
Even straight after stepping out of the opulent splendour of Gantley Hall, easing yourself gracefully into a Rolls-Royce interior is a special moment. The deep carpets, the self-closing doors, the opulent seats, the starlight headliner – it’s all quite breathtaking.
The main instrument panel, and the infotainment screen, are all digital, and all on show now, but there are still plenty of physical controls – and adjusting anything reminds you of the time and effort that goes into making the Rolls-Royce interior experience feel special and exquisitely engineered.
The only nod I found to the relatively mundane BMW underpinnings was a row of shortcut buttons. It’s a feature that even the most ardent Bimmer sceptics will confess to liking, and it’s a welcome system in the Roller, because there are a lot of things to set up, and hiding them behind configurable shortcut keys is quite useful.
One of these settings is a toggle for “Rolls-Royce Sound” which, you guessed it, pipes a synthetic sound through the cabin. It doesn’t exactly sound like an engine, but it’s not as sci-fi as some of these systems tend to be. Nevertheless, I soon turned it off. Because this car is all about the sound of silence.
And as you’re threading it through the Yorkshire roads, it’s the one thing that strikes you the most. After you’ve gotten your head around its size, that is. The refinement is on another level in the Spectre.
The fact there’s no engine rumbling away is something that’s easy to overlook, because somehow electric propulsion just seems like a very comfortable fit. The interior of a Rolls-Royce has always been an oasis of calm and serenity, but in the absolute silence afforded to you buy such astonishing build quality and attention to detail, it’s pretty much other-worldly.
That’s perhaps not the way you’d describe the acceleration, though. Of course, 650bhp makes this huge car feel very, very fast. And the even-more-powerful launch control… Sorry, “spirited mode” is quite jaw-dropping, but the Black Badge Spectre doesn’t propel you off the line in the way a lesser car would do. There’s no savagery, and no frivolity about its surge forward. It just firmly pins you into your seat and takes off in a relentless, effortless way.
In fact, if I’m being honest, it’s a car you feel more inclined to gently cruise around in, rather than open up and throw around. And that’s not just because it’s so huge. It’s because it just feels like a wafty grand tourer, rather than a sports coupe.
Although, if you absolutely must press on, the Black Badge has had its adaptive dampers recalibrated to reduce body squat under acceleration and braking, the steering is weightier, and there have been some further tweaks to offer more feedback, cut down on body roll, and improve the car’s composure.
In deepest-darkest Yorkshire, these upgrades are far less relevant than they will be on a track. But who takes a Rolls-Royce on a race track?
And it leaves me thinking that the Black Badge treatment is more about the individuality than the all-out power. Yes, it’s absurdly fast and, yes, it does corner far more competently than you could possibly imagine such a hefty beast could do, but does it put you in the mood for hijinks? Not really.
I loved my time in the Spectre, and I was sad to hand it back after such a short experience, but when I returned home that evening I spent some time on the Rolls-Royce online configurator, choosing how I’d spec up my whip if I was in a position to buy a Black Badge Spectre.
By the time my wife barked at me that it was way past my bedtime I’d added nearly £200,000 of customisations to a car that costs, in its most basic form, around £385,000.
And as I closed the “Inspiration Lounge” page and headed to bed, feeling exceptionally poor all of a sudden, it dawned on me that it almost doesn’t matter that the Black Badge Spectre has 650bhp, or that a car this size can run for around 300 miles between charges, or that I could order one in acid yellow, because I’m not a Rolls Royce sort of a person.
That said, given the new wave of buyers that have been seduced by the brand in recent years thanks to the Cullinan SUV and these special edition performance variants, I’m really not sure who a Rolls-Royce sort of person is any more. And I’m not sure I’d get along with them very well.
But if I see a Black Badge Spectre glide past me in mustard yellow at some point, I’ll remember my time in that very special car fondly. I might even stop and ask them for a selfie.
And after we share a fashionable fist bump, I’ll happily reflect on the fact that even a brand like Rolls-Royce can have a playful side.
And while a playful Rolls-Royce might not sit comfortably with the purists, I’m not a purist. And in my eyes, the Black Badge Spectre is not just a magnificent machine, it’s something to be celebrated.
