The ‘one new model a year’ expansion of Rolls-Royce continues.
The world’s most recognisable name in luxury motoring now comprises, depending on your generosity, as many as seven models.
The Rolls-Royce Phantom accounts for four of those and Rolls happily accepts that: saloon, long-wheelbase saloon, coupé and convertible.
But then there’s the smaller, cheaper Rolls-Royce Ghost, although such things are relative. The Ghost’s derivatives are perceived by Rolls to be individual models rather than variants.
There’s the Rolls-Royce Wraith coupé, a car that Rolls can’t quite bring itself to call sporting yet it is as dynamic as you’d want a Rolls to be, and now there’s this.
It’s called the Dawn and Rolls says it “is not a Wraith drophead”.
It would be perfectly natural to think of it as a convertible version of the Wraith. The two share the same platform and all but the same mechanicals.
But Rolls, we suppose, is intending you to think of the Dawn as a model in its own right, because it wants the Dawn to have a character of its own right.
Not for the Dawn the dynamism of the Wraith; instead, this car is meant to be “the most social” of luxury dropheads – it has four seats, not 2+2 seats – for those “who wish to bathe in the sunlight of the world’s most exclusive social hotspots”.