Luxurious, exclusive, exquisite; take your pick of adjectives for the lovely Dawn and any one of them will suffice. Basically a Wraith coupe under the skin, the Dawn’s sheet metal curves and swoops, making it—according to Rolls—the “sexiest Rolls-Royce ever built.” Inside there is room for four adult passengers; occupants will be dazzled by the gorgeous leather and acres of real wood trim. Under the hood is a 6.6-liter twin-turbo V-12 that makes 563 hp, so the Dawn is as fleet as it is sexy.
The Rolls-Royce Dawn is most at home cruising the glittering boulevards of Palm Springs or Palm Beach, the Siriusly Sinatra channel permanently playing, and the driver wearing $2600 Gucci crocodile loafers while contemplating how to cajole public financing for his new NFL stadium. Unlike, say, the similarly pricey Lamborghini Aventador, the Dawn can be driven and used every day. It clears curbs, there’s some room in the trunk, there is a trunk, and it’s easy to get in and out of. It also doesn’t invite a race at every stoplight, though it may invite people of all races to spontaneously come up to the window and quote Bernie Sanders. Alas, first-world problems.
The Dawn earns its copious allocation of asphalt by adding mechanical substance and harmony to exquisite design and detail. It’s not a basket of latter-day tricks; it’s not compatible with Apple Car Play, and there’s no on board Wi-Fi. At $402,300 as tested, including a $2750 destination charge and a $2100 gas-guzzler tax, the Dawn is slightly old school, like its future owners.
At a glance, the Dawn is a decapitated Wraith coupe, but Rolls says 80 percent of the body panels are unique to the new car. Top up, it has a spectacular raked profile, and a gorgeous sailing-sloop silhouette when the six-layer cloth top is down. With its recessed grille, it looks fantastic from the front whether you choose to keep the Flying Lady ornament deployed or, as is allowed by a function in the center-console screen, hidden away below a trapdoor. From the rear, well, the car is not quite as distinctively stately.
It rides on the same 122.5-inch wheelbase as the Wraith and is only slightly longer overall. The pair shares basic suspension, drive train, and structural elements, with the core engineering derived from a previous-generation BMW 7-series. From a performance standpoint, the difference is that the hardtop Wraith is about 400 pounds lighter and pushes its mass around with 624 horsepower from its BMW-built twin-turbo 6.6-liter V-12. The 5776-pound Dawn’s similar V-12 is tuned to just 563 horsepower.
The Dawn is enormous, but more than a foot shorter overall than the discontinued Phantom Drop head Coupe it effectively replaces. In compensation, the Dawn is more graceful, more at ease in traffic, and less likely to goad the peasantry toward fiery insurrection. It’s also surprisingly roomier than the Coupe.
Of course the Dawn’s interior uses leather from cows apparently raised on a diet of butter, and the stitching is exquisite. The glossy wood trim chosen for our test car was perfectly matched. The simple instrumentation, which uses what look like tiny sterling-silver sugar spoons for pointers, includes a “Power Reserve” gauge in lieu of a tachometer. There’s room for four full-size people to repose in comfort.
Enter through the massive rear-hinged, power-closing doors, and the Dawn seems almost human scale. It’s tough to tell which switches are plastic and which are metal, but all work with straightforward ease. Even the “Spirit of Ecstasy Rotary Controller” that navigates through the menus on the 10.3-inch LED screen operates perilously close to intuitively, no doubt because with just a few changes to the graphics, it’s actually BMW’s infotainment system. Our test car had the optional radar-based cruise control and lane-departure warning aboard; blind-spot monitoring is not available on the Dawn.
A sanguine harp strum warns you that the V-12 is about to purr to life, and the transmission engages via a thin wand on the steering column. Using GPS-gathered data to optimize its shift points, the ZF eight-speed transmission shifts nearly undetected. Yet, despite such utter tranquility, this is an almost-three-ton convertible that whooshes to 60 mph in 4.3 seconds and consumes the quarter-mile in an astonishing 12.8 seconds at 114 mph.
There’s not much steering feel through the oversize wheel, but the suspension tuning is perfect. This isn’t a car that wafts or glides over the road, but one that confidently devours asphalt as if it were a ribbon of Beluga caviar. The Dawn may or may not have the stiffest production convertible structure yet, but nothing else offers such a magnificent ride—secure, serene, and controlled—over virtually any surface. However, it will push its 255/40R-21 Continental ContiSportContact5 front tires if hustled indiscreetly, and the engine doesn’t respond quickly enough to offset that with power. So don’t do that. The skid pad orbit was a modest 0.83 g, and the massive brakes hauled the Dawn from 70 mph in a fairly phenomenal 162 feet.
“In the world of Rolls-Royce, day-to-day mathematical norms don’t always apply,” says Rolls’ director of design, Giles Taylor. “That’s why I say in the case of the new Rolls-Royce Dawn, 2+2 does not equal 4.” This may be smart marketing, a pleasant fantasy, or simple lunacy, but it’s bad math. And it misses the best thing about current Rollers, which is that they drive brilliantly in a world where two plus two always equals four. With interest.
