ROLLS-ROYCE Wraith Review

As for that fastback line of the car, this offers the Wraith the optional privacy of the Ghost's rear seats – when not in the mood to meet outsider glances, one can simply conceal his or her head behind the metallic surface of the C-pillars.

If you're feeling eccentric enough on a certain occasion, you can use the Rolls-Royce as a chauffeur vehicle.

As for the luxurious items in your luggage, the Wraith can accommodate 16.6 cubic inches (470 liters) of them. That value not only offers dominance over Bentley's Continental GT, but also places the coupe amusingly close to the Ghost's capacity of 17.3 cubic inches (490 liters).

All that is of little importance at the moment though, as we are trying to navigate the Rolls-Royce Wraith through the city.

This thought keeps repeating as the Wraith struggles to bring its massive self to a halt at the traffic lights. The stopping distance itself is fine, but the feel is unpleasant.

Unless you use racetrack focus the entire time, you, the driver, are forced to make an unpleasant choice. You either stop in improper positions or make everybody inside the car feel what inertia means.

You will have to do quite a bit of steering work, as the large wheel and the gentle ratio aren't fans of city driving. Here in the urban world, the Bentley Continental GT is much more fit for the job.

Nonetheless, just like in the Bentley's case, the V12 engine doesn't feel unnatural even when presented with the heaviest of traffic. In fact, the entire powertrain is skilled enough to provide an overly smooth journey through the city.

Thanks to this, you will never want to get out of the vehicle and return to the agitated surrounding world. The car itself discourages this a bit – try dealing with the massive door aperture in the usual crowded parking lot and you will see what we mean.

Speaking of the powertrain, Goodwood has done some extra work on the BMW-sourced twin-turbo V12 for the Wraith. We'll remind you that the engine entered service on BMW's previous 7-Series (E66). It had its displacement increased, along with a host of other mods, in order to be suitable for the Rolls-Royce Ghost, where it delivers 563 hp at 5,250 rpm and 575 lb-ft (780 Nm) of torque on tap from 1,500 rpm.

When fitted inside the Wraith's engine compartment, the unit gracefully delivers 624 hp (632 PS) at 5,600 rpm, with a maximum torque of 590 lb-ft (800 Nm), offered between 1,500 and 5,500 rpm.

The nature of the output increase perfectly fits the requirements for a Rolls-Royce coupe – Torque wears the sine qua non label here, so making extra power a priority was the reasonable thing to do.

As a result, the Rolls-Royce Ghost can deal with the 0 to 60 mph sprint in 4.4 seconds, while the 0 to 100 km/h run is completed in 4.6 seconds.


The true tech novelty brought by the Wraith lies in the ZF eight-speed automatic gearbox implementation. The SAT, or Satellite Aided Transmission, has the name of a secret agency and, as it turns out, works as one.

What the gearbox does here is ask the navigation what lies ahead and adapts to the situation. Rolls-Royce explains that the vehicle knows when to maintain a gear for an incoming corner or an imminent incline.

A large number of modern transmissions already take factors such as steering wheel angle into account, but SAT promises to go one step further. It is also cool because Rolls-Royce got to use it ahead of BMW, whose engineers developed this. According to them, this had something to do with F1.

The car always anticipates your needs and acts accordingly. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to notice the SAT's contribution. First of all, you can barely feel the Wraith's transmission shifting gears at all, so you can't quite tell in which ratio you are at a certain time, at least not without focusing on this.

Still, there were a few occasions where the Wraith behaved in a manner we had not seen on a car before. For instance, as we were accelerating up a long hill, the gearbox allowed short but rather firm acceleration episodes in each of the ratios. For the driver, this brought sequential joy, while the passenger felt a rapid, yet smooth transition. Majestic.

As for the dialed-up V12 engine, this is one hell of a good actor. Regardless of your requirements, it knows how play things smooth. The oomph arrives early and there is more of it that you expect.

As the power reserve indicator spins counterclockwise, the Wraith heads towards the horizon defying the notion of aerodynamic drag. Not for one second does the engine show its efforts, it smiles while thundering through the rev range. Despite the sportier nature of the car, the Wraith still obeys the 155 mph (250 km/h) electronic speed limit though.

In terms of exhaust note, the Wraith is bit more vocal than the Ghost. Still, it remains rather quiet until you reach the last 20 percent of its power reserve.

In return for its noblesse, the Wraith's V12 showed a 9.1 mpg (26 L/100 km) during our drive. For the record, the official figures place the coupe at 13 mpg (18 L/100 km) in the city and 19 mpg (12.4 L/100 km) on the highway.

Should you encounter any road imperfection during your journey, the reworked suspension, with its air springs and adaptive dampers, is there to undo this. Rolls-Royce were telling the truth when they said the ride feels like a "bed of air".

This ample coupe rides like a gliding bird. And if you push it hard through the corners, the Wraith knows no understeer. Instead, it keeps on delivering small portions of power, while the steering makes for a decently involving experience. As with other Rolls-Royce models, you can skip the electronics and drift this machine. There is just one approximation that keeps this story from having a happy ending.

About thirty percent. This is the amount of body roll they should have removed from the Wraith's handling. Instead, the Wraith leans rather generously through the bends and this seriously affects the driving experience. The result is that you can only enjoy the car up to seven tenths.

Among others, we are explained that the Wraith's natural environment sits within "the twisting roads of an Alpine pass".

Well, it simply doesn't. Just like you can feel the weight of the car in its brakes, the cornering abilities are limited by this.

Moreover, the cruising bit, which the Wraith would've handled brilliantly otherwise, sees a noticeable wind noise coming from the front side windows once you pass 80 mph (130 km/h) or so.

This affects the feeling of supreme security expected from such a car. And speaking of safety, the Wraith comes with an array of systems.

For instance, its Advanced Crash Management, a passive safety feature, ensures 2,000 measurements are being made each second. This allows the car to deploy the proper systems in the event of a crash. Curiously though, in terms of active safety, the Wraith misses a Blind Spot Monitor.

As one of our readers added, the Wraith's rear-wheel drive further separates this from the Bentley Continental GT, which shares shares the power to all four wheels. To exploit the Wraith's elegance, one must not push it all that hard through the bends and this limit would have been taken further by an AWD system gifted with the right bias.

The Rolls-Royce Wraith is a flawed gem. Its weighty feeling also affected the Ghost, but, in that case, we found the matter as perfectly acceptable – that was a sedan and it also wasn't backed by as many sporty claims as the Wraith. Here on this coupe, it makes up the worst part of the car.

Don't get us wrong, the Rolls-Royce Wraith has plenty of merits. Its best part lies in its styling, which stands as a testament of Rolls-Royce core values. Underneath, the engineers have done a superb job with the platform.

Moreover, excepting the visible BMW bits, the cabin is a superb execution. From space to materials, everything enchants.

In addition, as with any modern high-spec BMW, the engine and transmission are brilliant, both individually and as a team.

The time has come to compare the Wraith with the Continental GT. As usual with Rolls-Bentley comparos, the idea itself doesn't make full sense, since it is difficult for the two to share customers. Nonetheless, this particular case makes for quite a bit of irony.

When considering the W12 version of the Continental GT, this and the Wraith weigh about the same. Despite this, the Rolls is considerably larger, so it should win the chassis and body efficiency game.

Instead, it is the Bentley that takes the crown here. That's because the Continental GT does a much better job at concealing its weight.

Bentley has even updated the flagship version of the Conti GT, the Speed.

Nonetheless, like we said, these are the exact definitions of cars that can't be compared based on numbers. Just consider the image premium Rolls-Royce has. Of course, this also means that the Wraith can be up to 40 percent more expensive than the Continental GT Speed.

The Rolls-Royce Wraith comes with a starting price of US$ 284,900, not including taxes and the delivery charge. In Europe, the Ghost starts at EUR 245,000 plus VAT.

In terms of value for money, the logic is simple. The Wraith offers less than the Ghost for more, so it receives a seven from us.

By the way, if we were in the market for a truly majestic Gran Tourer, we wouldn't choose any of these two. We'd opt for the Bentley Continental GT in V8 or V8 S trim.

Perhaps it should have been predictable that the most powerful, fastest Rolls-Royce ever made would not necessarily also be the best.