Since its introduction late last year, the Rolls-Royce Spectre has made quite some wafting ripples in the luxury EV landscape. Enough, in fact, for Robb Report editors to have named it the Best of the Best Electric Vehicle for 2024. Its substantial presence and performance make it an obvious choice, with the latter every bit the equal of that found in any of Goodwood’s V-12-engined cars.
What makes the Spectre a standout among other zero-emissions models is its very EV-ness as it embodies the Rolls-Royce ethos of silent comportment and refined luxury, something to which even the most muffled V-12 can never match. (It’s to be noted that the original 2004 Phantom did not have visible exhaust tailpipes, so discreet and elegant was its design.) Rolls-Royce automobiles, though, have never been shrinking violets.
The automaker has been amenable to bespoke commissions from the very beginning, some of which have been remarkable in the extreme. Today, the latest one-off Rolls-Royce is the Spectre Semaphore, which pushes the creative envelope far afield. This unique Spectre features one-of-a-kind artwork on the bonnet (Brit-speak for a car’s hood), which is, according to Rolls-Royce, “a dramatic ‘Marbled Paint Spill’ requiring 160 hours of development by Rolls-Royce craftspeople, who applied silver lacquer and multiple layers of clearcoat for a seamless finish.
” To us, it recalls paintings by Morris Lewis or Paul Jenkins, whose poured color fields expressed lyrical abstra.