Gallery: New Rolls-Royce Fixes the Big Problems With Convertibles
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Rolls-Royce is introducing a convertible called the “Dawn,” an attractive car packed with swanky features and designed to eliminate two major hassles of convertibles.
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The Dawn is a drop-top version of the Wraith coupe, wrapped in new bodywork.
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The 6.6-liter twin-turbocharged V12 engine produces 563 horsepower, enough to propel 5,600 pounds of opulence to 62 mph in a spritely 4.9 seconds.
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The front seat is packed with the leather and high-tech gadgets you always get with a Rolls.
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What's special here is the backseat, which offers just as much legroom as the back of the Wraith coupe.
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In most convertibles, the backseat is comfortable if you’re a child or a sack of potatoes because the space needed to stash the roof impinges on space for things like your legs.
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So Rolls cut trunk space from 16.6 to 10.4 cubic feet, extended the length of the car by half an inch, and engaged in a little creative origami when engineering the roof’s folding mechanism.
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The result is a “four full seater” that offers “a sumptuous and sartorial slingshot of wood and leather” and seats that are “very individual” and “cosseting.”
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The second coolest thing about the Dawn is how quiet it's said to be with the top up.
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Rolls attributes that to smart aerodynamics and a perfectly smooth roof that limits turbulence and wind noise.
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Rather than poke and swipe at a screen like those plebeians in Bentleys, those in a Dawn use their fingers to write commands on the pad, a neat tool we’ve seen in recent Audis and BMWs.
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This reader recognizes Mandarin and Arabic, showing Rolls recognizes that Dawn happens in the East, where you can find more and more of the world’s billionaires.
