Drivin' the Big 'Un.(Column)

Byline: Matt Davis

Of course I'd seen the thing a few times before, sat in it, squished my toes around in its supreme floor coverings and done bad impressions of horse-faced royals while sitting in the back. There have been offers to drive the car in the United States and mainland Europe, but I wanted to drive the latest Roll-Royce Phantom in its proper environment, and to have time to discover the personality of the machine that Charles Stewart Rolls and Frederick Henry Royce might have wanted to carry their collective genius into the 21st century.

From south of London, I headed straight for the Midlands, ordering plowman lunches the whole way to the Welsh border, west of Birmingham. From there, on the second day, I guided the Phantom due east toward East Anglia along some of the most beautiful B-roads and through several 16th century market towns. Having hit the redline on my rural quaint-o-meter, I bedded down north of London before I was to give the Rolls back to its handlers the following day at the point where I'd started.

I want a Phantom. I deserve one, too. It would take into my next life to pay for the first half of it, but what a great way to transmigrate. I haven't felt so geeked since my first full day in a Ford Excursion, another vehicle I want one of, by the way. From its steamroller wheel-set to its Bakelite black steering wheel right out of the 1930s, from its tall and thick sound-deadening windows to its shocking amount of momentum under acceleration, I must have a Phantom.

Right away after receiving the car, I was driving it a bit like a rodeo rider might at first drive a purebred racehorse-dashing in and out of the left lane to pass and show off. The ocean of power available at low revs from this non-turbo, ...