[NOISE]
[MUSIC]
The average Rolls-Royce customer is around 40 years old, that's quite young in the grand scheme of things.
Half of Rolls-Royce customers are younger than that.
That's why this, the Rolls Royce Wraith Black Badge exists.
The Black Badge Rolls Royces are apparently for young men in a hurry.
Currently, you can get two with the bespoke Black Badge trim, a Ghost which gets more power and more talk, and this, a Wraith It gets more talk and other things.
But, mercibly, it still gets trolleys indoors, which is good for me tonight because it's raining and miserable.
See, no one can ever accuse a Rolls of being a sports car.
Some buyers have had their eyes drawn by the likes of Bentley, who offer a slightly more sporty take on luxury.
And the Black Badge is just that.
More power, more attitude, more fun, than a traditional Roller.
Looking to the past, that's something that Rolls-Royce was all about.
Fun, adventure, going against the grain, having attitude And that's all because of an association with a group of young, adventurous types.
The bright, young things.
Who are these people then?
Well, they were the kids who were too young to go to World War I. The children of the upper echelons of society.
They had money, time and a desire to make the most of what they had.
Thing for partying, being grand and using London as their playground.
The bright young things with the sort of new money hipster made in Chelsea types.
Their parties were legendary, drinking, debauchery, people swinging from chandeliers.
There was one Which was the, come as you wear party.
Now invites was sent out to arrive at all hours of the day, and they insisted that the recipient turn up to the event, wearing whatever they were wearing, when they received the invite.
The outfit, were apparently outlandish, and brilliant.
The bright young things weren't often ones for the norm.
Their relationships were with whoever they wanted them to be.
No matter what side of the law they fell on.
But the bright young things had another pastime, treasure hunts.
The treasure hunts were put together Simply just [UNKNOWN] for a few people.
What they do is they get around town using many means of transporting including notably the London Public Transport System which is something they weren't really used and then once they found their trinkets they'd retire to a bar or a hotel or a restaurant and get absolutely battered.
Clues for the location of treasures would come in all shapes and forms, from newspaper headlines to being baked into loaves of [UNKNOWN].
Their hunts after moving on from public transport Moves to the motorcar namely Rolls Royce motorcars.
The Daily Mail, a newspaper that manages to find outrage in everything from chocolate spread to purer, simple human decency was the first people to notice what was going on.
After seeing 50 motorcars parading through towns screaming on one of their famous treasure hunts They called them the bright young people.
And you know what?
The bright young things really loved the media attention.
The were a bit whoreish in that respect.
They also loved the fact that their antics rather upset their elders.
[MUSIC]
[SOUND] Seeing as I've got my finest velvet on and a roller at the dead of night in London, I thought it would be appropriate to have a treasure hunt of my own.
Time to take the roller to bits of town that explain what's new about it.
[MUSIC]
Two in a head but one in a town, look up at me from the roller as many look down.
Well, that would be the London Eye.
Now, what's special about that?
It's big and it's round, just like the wheels on this.
And they are pretty special.
They've got 22 layers of carbon fiber making them up, which is actually well, impressive stuff.
It took Rolls Royce apparently four years To develop it.
Standing proud with my weapon on show as the circus of lights swirls below.
That could be eros and what a shabby weaponized friend is pointing towards is of course, the statute, the spirit of ecstasy, the spirit that adorns every Rolls Royce hood.
Now the things is, on the black bulge, the spirit is black as is the badge and there is other exterior bit and the interior special as well.
So dark and moody with a carbon composite dotted all over the place.
Sterning leather and even a new clock It's very special in here, anyway, onto another clue.
[MUSIC]
Not the clock but rather the bell, with gears inside for time to tell.
But that must be big bell, because if it's the gears in cabs, we'll probably refer them to the gearbox.
Now in the Just like here, you get an HP GPS guided gable, so it'll change gear depending on what road and how you're driving but this one has been recalibrated to suit the black bulges more sporting character.
The engine has been given an extra feature 52 foot to play with as well.
Now you get 642 pound foot to go with the 6.6 litre turbo V12 624 brake horsepower.
Zero to 62 takes 4.5 secodns and it'll top out at an adequate 155 miles an hour.
Not bad for a car that weighs just shy of two and a half tons.
Twin that with a revised more sporting air suspension setup and bigger brakes and it's setting up to be quite an impressive motor.
The bright young things were well known for their love of all things Rolls Royce and luxury and excellence and all that stuff.
So would the Wraith Black Badge be the right motor for them?
I was debating going into this big, long, diatribe about how amazing everything is, and I like the steering is, and how quiet it is because,
[BLANK_AUDIO]
It is very quiet.
The steering is very nice and it's like floating.
The interior is amazing, although the entertainment system is ye olde school iDrive.
The look and feel of the thing is typical Rolls-Royce, it's so quiet, so smooth, so perfect.
There's no point in going to deep into it, because You know what to expect of a Roller.
You know what this is going to be like, you don't need me to tell you that the Rolls Royce is a good car, because it is absolutely phenomenal.
There's nothing quite like a Rolls Royce.
As I said with the Dorn you don't drive a Rolls Royce you move with it, you feel it, you experience it, you're part of it, it's just It's unlike anything else in the world.
There with the Black Badge, yeah, they've made a few modifications to it.
You can hear a bit more of the engine, and this thing is plenty fast enough as well, naught to 62 in four and a half seconds, which for something of this size, this weight, is other worldly, and bizarre and absolutely incredible.
The performance is breathtaking, yet there are a few of the common isn't so great and the turning circle is enormous.
The workmanship in here, the quality and everything is just mind blowing.
Every time I step into a roller, it's just, it's perfect is what it is.
It's absolutely perfect and that's the kind of thing that people like the bright, young things way back in the day would have aspired to.
They didn't want Anything that wasn't right.
These are the people that created their own culture of silliness and fun.
The world they'd entered was irrevocably changed by the I World War.
So they made it up.
They did it their own way.
They wanted perfection, they wanted fun, they wanted outrageousness and hilarity at every step.
And that is kinda what this thing is.
Because it is hilariously fast.
It's outrageous to look at.
I mean in black at night yet it's a bit tricky to say it's quite stealthy.
But the size of this thing, the dimension It's [INAUDIBLE]
This is a monuments to British luxury to excess.
So what happens when you dont just watch a sports team from a private box, it's you watch your sports team that you own from your private box and then you get back in to this and you drive home or drive to wherever they are.
And party the night away.
If you think of the fountain and the Ghost as the sort of joy from the back seat, the ones where you wish to have the Rolls Royce lifestyle but not necessarily drive the Rolls Royce.
This is the Roller that you buy and you drive and you enjoy and you go from party to party to event to event.
And you just have the best time ever.
That's this and bloody brilliant.
More talk, a sharper ride, sleek new looks, and an attitude that suits the bright young things of today.
The Wraith may not be the smallest car in the world, but it's certainly one of the finest.
[MUSIC]
