Published:
15 June 2016In a particularly memorable section of the Rolls-Royce press pack, it suggests “rear passengers do not merely ‘get out’ of a Dawn, but rather stand and disembark as if from a Riva motor launch onto a glamorous private jetty”.
Well, indeed. The coach doors do come into their own in drophead format, as does the car’s prodigious size.
Roof off, and with the front seat tidied away electrically, it is possible to waltz from the car – as long as you’ve taken the step down from the sill into account and stopped on a gravel driveway the breadth of the Thames.
Roof on, and squeezed into a space at Sainsbury’s Local, egress gets a little more inelegant, but in such a circumstance, the average Dawn occupant is likely to be lost or desperate and so in a forgiving mood.
The cabin fills every other requirement made of it with this kind of pomp and circumstance. Thus, the steering wheel is vast, the heater controls are slightly mysterious and the inherited iDrive set-up is dignified.
To draw attention to the quality of the upholstery or the veneers is as unnecessary as pointing out that Johannes Vermeer used expensive paint; suffice to say, what you can see and most of what you can touch is of an exceptional standard – unrivalled anywhere, except perhaps at the equally fastidious Bentley factory.
