Auto Express

2022 Rolls-Royce Ghost Black Badge


Every now and then, something hits my driveway that makes me completely uncomfortable. It can be complicated enough to come up with something to write about the fifth part Hyundai Sonata or Tuesday Jeep Wrangler I’ve been driving for a period of 18 months, but something like 2022 Rolls-Royce Ghost Black Badge poses a very different conundrum: What can I say to someone with half a million dollars to spend on their next trip?

I did round there but not much. Before taxes, your card and your driver’s pay, this one Ghost sign up $484,950. Of which, $43,850 was transferred to Black Badgewhen distilled to its purest essence, is an enthusiast gear pack with some pretty impressive aesthetic components. Rolls royce carthe reputation of a manufacturer of cars intended to be driven in rather than driving, but the Ghost is the de facto four-door “driver” in the lineup, and the Black Badge is almost an antidote to that cliché as you’ll find in our portfolio. company.

While it’s a performance model, the Black Badge doesn’t quite blow away the Ghost’s already impressive base performance. It benefits from an additional 29 horsepower and 57 pound-feet of torque (583 hp and 663 lb-ft, respectively) and re-tuned air springs to “reduce” less body roll when cornering more decisively.” The brake have also been tweaked for more immediate response and shorter pedal travel, but the clamps themselves are exactly the same as a standard Ghost.

In other words, Black Badge is a performance package that costs more than some performance car. Welcome to tier 0 of car ownership. It was a cliché, of course. Rolls-Royce has sold a total of 5,586 units engine cars in 2021, and not one of them is in my permanent collection. You’re shocked, I know. Statistically, we are more likely to be in the same boat. I am living vicariously on the marketing budget of Rolls-Royce and you are living indirectly on me. Too bad. I’m pretty boring.

It’s so boring that the best outing I can think of is a stroll to a lakeside cottage just 30 miles or so north of Detroit. For the price of this vehicle, you’d be forgiven for insisting that the Ghost can do better than anything one might expect from a modern four-wheel drive vehicle, but in reality, People who can afford to ride in the Black Badge can call other forms of transportation if the weather worsens.

Since I wasn’t one of those people, I had to factor in the broader consequences of a half-million dollar car getting stuck in the snow. And it snowed, on the eve of the scheduled arrival of the Phantom, no less. In my car, being buried deep into the axle would be a slight inconvenience. Here, it’s something that could easily take up a weekend (or more) and make Rolls-Royce less inclined to let it go. Automatic log sample its products. You know, there’s no pressure.

But in no small part due to Rolls-Royce’s foresight, it turned out that I really didn’t need to worry despite the snowfall of nearly a meter in some parts of the north. Strengthening the Ghost’s standard four-wheel drive system is a set of wheels and handlebars that replace the ostentatious carbon fiber wheels typically fitted to the Black Badge. And more than a few haughty SUVs and vans Owners have learned that this combination isn’t just for the best trails and gravel of rural Michigan.

@autoblog LED title “Meteor Star” on the Rolls-Royce Ghost Black Badge 2022 🤩✨
#Rolls royce brand car
#luxurious
#ghost
♬ Infinite – Tarik

After exiting the highway, the path leading to the cottage alternates between paved and unpaved roads. While the asphalt surfaces showed significant melting by the time I headed north, the dirt and gravel sections were barely groomed apart from the traces of other adventurous wanderers. This should be enough to ensure that the Ghost’s front end won’t get snowed on the way, but its large, long belly often rustles against larger drifts as it hauls cargo through the snowy forest. .

The ghost was long and heavy, but it proved surprisingly agile and steady even on these snow-covered surfaces. F-150s and Grand Cherokees would appear in my mirror as the straight road disappeared at every turn. They will reappear later, obviously trying to keep up the pace. Then, a group of teenagers standing side by side decorated with snow shovels stalked the Ghost through a lakeside neighborhood, possibly hoping to claim a Rolls-Royce-sized bounty if I found myself in the past. deep. Eventually they get bored and come back.

It is on this road that I sometimes come across the most nebulous things about what owning a Rolls-Royce must be like – going from house to house on some remote and remote country road, unencumbered by man or nature, isolated and raised by wool and sheepskin, and surrounded by more lacquered surfaces than I can count. These glimpses are few and far between, and close to the actual experience I once expected life to take me to.

While the concept of a lakeside cottage may bring wealth and privilege, this is Michigan where they practically give you a riverside lot when you get your driver’s license. The homes along this particular lake are modest in size and because they are located near the Detroit subway, Ann Arbor, Pontiac and Flint, many of which are year-round. Out of curiosity, I pulled Zillow up. Sure, for the list price of Black Badge, I could pick about half a dozen homes along those shores – some of them no bigger than Ghost, I might add. It barely fits in the driveway of the house; Two-car garage is a complete no-boot.

Trust me, it’s obvious to me as well as to any of you that a car like this requires better care and upkeep and is beyond what I can provide, and I I don’t just mean the basic financial commitment. What you and I take for granted will come true when a Ghost walks in Golf. “Can I find parking at the grocery store?” instead becomes, “Can I find parking at the barely guaranteed grocery store six insurance claim after Molly Midwest’s carpet rats banged on the door? “Shake Shack has no waiter, you know.

I’m not opposed to saving cars for special occasions – I own two of my own “treat” cars – but even if I could snap my fingers and make a Ghost appear in my driveway mine freely and clearly, it will also spoil the rest of my life around it that it will no longer be a “car” the way I define it. The concern I feel for the cars I usually drive will be replaced by boredom. I won’t own a Ghost, it will own me – consuming my life as greedily as it consumed my weekend. And that brings me back to my dilemma: Whose buying decision can I expect from my experience?

I pondered that very question on a chilly February night as I leaned into the back of the Ghost, closing the door with the engine off. In the dark, the LEDs mounted in the header cast a show, casting false meteors across a vast, hand-crafted star field. I lingered, pondering what it would be like to relax my mind after a long day and simply look up at those fragile blobs and forget everything that had brought me to that moment. Each one of those lights was like a small window into a world I would never know – beautiful, different and forever out of reach. But I won’t have any other way.

Related videos:



Source link

news7h

News7h: Update the world's latest breaking news online of the day, breaking news, politics, society today, international mainstream news .Updated news 24/7: Entertainment, Sports...at the World everyday world. Hot news, images, video clips that are updated quickly and reliably

Related Articles

Back to top button