EVERY SO OFTEN the hapless automotive PR copywriter, desperately trying to find a hook to plug a new car, will come across something that causes them to shout ‘YESSS!!!’ and punch the air. When publicising the new Spectre, a quote by Rolls-Royce co-founder Charles Rolls in 1900 must have seemed like a lottery win: ‘The electric car is perfectly noiseless and clean. There is no smell or vibration. They should become very useful when fixed charging stations can be arranged.’
It took more than a century for Rolls’ prophetic words to become reality – well, happened – and for Rolls-Royce to debut an electric Phantom prototype, 102EX, at the Villa d’Este Concours in 2011. We featured it as a sidebar to an epic road trip in the then-current Ghost ( 99) and my co-driver Richard Heseltine wrote: ‘This is only a testbed; it foretells what the hyper-luxury car might be like in a few decades time. Consider us intrigued.’
