2027 Rolls-Royce Spectre II First Drive: More Power, More Range, More Luxury

Ssshhhh! The first ever electric-powered Rolls-Royce has been given a midcycle tweak. It has more power, more range, and offers more ways in which you can spend thousands and thousands of dollars on making sure it looks like no one else’s Rolls-Royce. But shouting about it seems all a bit … vulgar. So, we’ll just murmur the introduction as one would over a convivial scotch in a quiet corner of the reading room of a London gentleman’s club: Meet the Rolls-Royce Spectre II.

The original Spectre, launched in 2022, was the fourth modern Rolls-Royce to be built using the brand’s highly flexible Architecture of Luxury aluminum spaceframe technology. The 112.4-kWh (net) battery pack is packaged under the floor and integrated into the spaceframe structure, boosting torsional rigidity 30 percent over the Ghost sedan, with which this car shares suspension elements. Working through a 400-volt electrical architecture, the battery feeds two BMW-designed externally excited synchronous (electromagnet) motors, one mounted at the front axle and one at the rear.

A Rolls-Royce First, With the Looks to Match

All the mechanical hardware is wrapped in swooping coupe bodywork designed under the direction of Anders Warming. Up front is the widest execution of the fabled Rolls-Royce Pantheon grille in history, topped with a petite Spirit of Ecstasy figurine that took over 830 hours of design modeling and wind-tunnel testing to help make the Spectre, which boasts a claimed drag coefficient of 0.25, the most aerodynamic Rolls-Royce ever built. Giant powered rear-hinged coach doors, each 59 inches long, open to reveal an interior that ticks all the Rolls-Royce boxes: sumptuously trimmed seats, expensive decorative elements, and splashes of rich chrome.

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The Spectre II combines practical improvements with emotional upgrades. The practical stuff includes revised battery cell technology that has increased range by a useful amount to between 308 and 324 miles on the EPA test regime, while charge time has been reduced by 14 percent. In addition, more power and torque have been unlocked from the motors. While the front motor can produce a maximum of 255 hp and 269 lb-ft and the rear 483 hp and 479 lb-ft, total system output for the regular Spectre II has been set at 593 hp, while the sportier Spectre II Black Badge gives you 671 hp to play with. Peak torque ranges from 749 to 811 lb-ft.

The emotional stuff includes the option of what Rolls-Royce calls Gradient Two-Tone Paint, a complex finish that changes the color of the car from front to rear. Available in four different colorways, it takes four days to complete. The Spectre II Black Badge also introduces what Rolls-Royce calls the Iced Black exterior trim package that sheaths most of the exterior shiny bits with a soft-sheen satin black finish. Iced Black is also available on the new forged multi-spoke 23-inch wheel developed for the Spectre II Black Badge. There’s a new wheel for the standard Spectre II, too, a forged 23-inch item with glittering, sharp-edged facets that take six hours to hand-finish.

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The Customization Gets Gloriously Excessive

Inside, Spectre II customers can choose a new cloth trim called Duality Twill that’s made from bamboo and can incorporate up to 10 miles of thread in up to 50 colors and 2.6 million stitches and takes 25 hours to complete. It’s a Rolls-Royce, so of course you can order a leather-trimmed interior, but the Spectre II offers the ability to have precise perforations made in the hides to create your own unique artwork. The Spectre II also bows new high-gloss Brindled Walnut veneer created by combining walnut sourced from non-fruiting trees that would otherwise be burned with residual eucalyptus fibers from fine paper production to form a richly layered tiger-stripe pattern. These elements are compressed and then cut into veneers sealed with a lacquer infused with a fine powder of glass flakes before a final clearcoat is applied.

Front-seat passengers get new illuminated artwork on their end of a glass panel that now stretches right across the dash. Composed of 8,108 individual illuminations, its directional wave pattern is said to be inspired by the shifting mist that settles over the woodlands of the countryside near the Rolls-Royce factory near Goodwood, England. They can also glance at a new clock that sits in its own little chamber behind the glass above a tiny Spirit of Ecstasy statue. Oddly, the reality isn’t as impressive as it sounds—the clock, which has cast-metal hands and is said to be inspired by precision aviation elements, looks like a fancy Swatch, and the mini-me Spirit of Ecstasy looks as if it’s made of chrome-plated molded plastic. It’s a rare misstep from BMW, which since 1998 has proven a worthy custodian of the Rolls-Royce brand.

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Silent, Smooth, and Seriously Quick

Provided you switch off the silly artificial noisescape composed by Hans Zimmer, the Spectre II drives with a silken silence that perfectionist engineer Henry Royce could only have dreamed of when he and entrepreneurial aristocrat Charles Rolls founded Rolls-Royce in 1904. Though Royce made his reputation creating the smoothest and quietest internal combustion cars of his day, he was in fact an electrical engineer, and Rolls well understood the potential of an electric powertrain even as the automotive age sputtered into life. “The electric car is perfectly noiseless and clean,” Rolls declared after driving an EV made by the Columbia Automobile Company of Hartford, Connecticut, in April 1900. “There is no smell or vibration, and they should become very useful when fixed charging stations can be arranged.”

Royce, who in 1932 initiated the design work on what would become the legendary Merlin V-12 aero engine that powered the Spitfire and P51 Mustang fighters during WWII, would have been impressed by the Spectre II’s performance, too. Despite tipping the scales at 6,450 pounds, the standard Spectre II will whoosh from 0 to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds, while the Black Badge takes just 4.1 seconds. Both cars are electronically limited to a top speed of 155 mph.

Those big rear-hinged doors might swing out wide, but you must swivel your hips and duck your head under the backswept A-pillar to get behind the wheel of the Spectre II. The car’s exterior design cleverly hides the fact there’s about 10 inches between the bottom of the sills and the upper surface of the floor, but once inside, you’re acutely aware you’re sitting on top of a bulky battery pack. The Spectre II wakes up on pressing an old-school start button. Tug the column-mounted shifter down into D, and you’re ready to go.

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The Spectre Is Starting to Feel Its Age

Rolls-Royce was the first ultra-luxury brand to launch an EV, and in the context of today’s lightning-fast development times, supercharged by the Chinese, the Spectre II feels a little last generation in some ways. There are, for example, only two levels of lift-off regenerative braking, the standard setting slowing the car at a slightly faster rate than if you lifted off the gas in a V-12 Rolls-Royce, and a one-pedal drive mode that will bring the car smoothly to a complete halt without the need to even brush the brake pedal. And compared with the screens and features now standard on the Neue Klasse EVs, the Spectre II’s infotainment system looks and feels rather old-school BMW, as does some of the switchgear in the center console.

The digital dash’s graphics are beautifully executed, but in an era when analog is the new luxury, surely every Rolls-Royce, even an electric-powered one, should have instruments with physical faces and needles, like those in the Bugatti Tourbillon. Thankfully, the Spectre II retains Rolls-Royce’s mechanical dash vents, complete with their iconic organ-stop open-close mechanism. Unfortunately, BMW’s obsession with thick-rimmed steering wheels has leached into Rolls-Royce: It only takes a few miles on the road to realize the Spectre II’s tiller lacks the fingertip delicacy that was the hallmark of the Phantom VII.

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Why Less Is More With the Spectre II

The Spectre II Black Badge might have more power and torque, but the regular Spectre II is the better Rolls-Royce. Both cars roll on the same wheel and tire combination, their 23-inch footwear shod with 255/40 Pirelli P Zero tires up front and 295/35 items at the rear. They also share identical suspension hardware. But the Black Badge gets unique suspension software tuning that, among other things, reacts more quickly to increase damping. That gives the Black Badge the initial sensation of having tighter body control, but it also makes the car feel that it lacks suspension travel over bigger humps and heaves.

The regular Spectre II feels lighter on its feet than the Black Badge, its suspension tune allowing the car to breathe better over a lumpy road. It also feels more alert on initial corner entry; the heavier rim effort artificially dialed into the Black Badge’s steering in the name of sportiness fractionally slows the response time between hand action on the steering-wheel rim and tire reaction on the tarmac. Keen drivers might want the slightly quicker calibration of the Black Badge’s accelerator pedal, but nonetheless, the regular Spectre II will waft down any road with a pace and composure that belies its size and weight.

Apparently, the Ultra-Rich Have Changed Their Minds

The ultra-wealthy are said to be little interested in EVs, but Rolls-Royce says the Spectre has for the past few years been its second bestselling model globally—after the Cullinan SUV—though it coyly declines to say exactly how many it has sold. The company also says its own customer research has revealed the Spectre to typically be the second Rolls-Royce in a seven-car garage, and is on average driven 4000 miles a year, about the same mileage as the internal combustion engine Wraith and Phantom coupes. Rolls-Royce’s first ever EV has clearly found its niche, and the Spectre II’s upgrades and improvements won’t disappoint its exclusive clientele.