Ghost in the machine
It is a historical curiosity that when Rolls-Royce first used the Wraith
name way back in the late 1930s, the company sold only the running
chassis. Independent coachbuilders supplied the bodies, built to reflect
the owner’s particular (and sometimes peculiar) taste. These days, the
new Wraith’s running gear traces its ancestry to corporate overlord BMW,
while the body is the portion that defines a modern Roller as both
distinct and distinctly British.
Odd, then, that the Wraith’s fastback roofline—the car’s defining
feature—was cribbed from a couple of Italian cars. You see, Rolls has no
precedent for a roofline that looks anything like this, so its
designers couldn’t play the heritage card. According to design director
Giles Taylor, the inspiration comes instead from the Lancia Aurelia coupe and the Maserati Ghibli (the original coupe introduced in 1967,
not the recently introduced sedan of the same name). In profile, in
person, this car looks spectacular and improbable. It’s such a massive
and unexpected thing in any setting you can imagine. And it’s so
gloriously space-inefficient, so unchained from the tedious priorities
of regular cars. The sharp crease between the roofline and the brutal,
bricklike shape of the lower body serves to make the Wraith one of few
modern cars that looks totally
appropriate in a two-tone paint job
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