A new Dawn for Rolls-Royce

I flatter myself that when Charles Rolls made the acquaintance of Henry Royce in Manchester’s exalted Midland Hotel in 1904, they had a vision: that one day soon(-ish), a swanky conveyance of their design would conduct me, a lad from that very neighbourhood, in sumptuous style around the boulevards of a far-off land, where the triumphant approach of their mechanical wonder would cast beatific smiles upon the rosy cheeks of the citizenry, who would sense that everything was in its proper place and all was right with the world.

As I propelled their noble chariot, I would realise that everything Rolls and Royce had ever envisaged and executed was all about that very moment: all about the “now” … and all for me.

Well, anyway, that’s what it feels like when you drive the just-minted Rolls-Royce Dawn, a beefy beast of a convertible that’s more akin to an ocean cruiser with a ride so ripple free you’re surprised to find you’re not, in fact, steaming imperiously across a lake of full-cream milk and onwards across a shore of marshmallow pies. Smoother than a pint of Guinness and cooler than an Inuit’s ice-box at a picnic, the Dawn represents a new, er, dawn for Rolls-Royce – or at least 80 per cent of one.

With its roof retracted, the hand-built Dawn resembles a sawn-off Wraith coupé, but according to the company its body panels are four-fifths new.

And if you’re familiar with the Ghost you might find the Dawn a tad tiddly at a mere 5.28 metres long; you three or four can go and play on your own while the rest of us oooh and aaah about the Dawn’s recessed (but still instantly recognisable) grille, the raked (and rakish) profile, the head-up digital speed display and the perfect piping and hand stitching of the sumptuous interior’s natural-grain leather.

Considering the blue-blood breeding of this stallion of the streets it seems rather vulgar to introduce statistics and specifications: a soulless endeavour akin to revealing that Picasso used house paint and the wrong end of a brush.