It’s incredible. On the one hand, there are launch drives that I attend that stretch for three days, with unearthly flights, stupid connections, lost luggage, boring presentations, excessive lunches, snoring colleagues, luxury rooms with weird pillows, more boring presentations and then a drive. There are times when I am ready and willing not to drive yet another super-mega-all new-hatchback with 3cc and 1.5 bhp more than the predecessor. And of course, the said all-new hatchback will be all of 30 per cent stiffer than the uncouth designer who copied the lines from the original designed by someone called Bangle. And yes, all these hatches have McPherson struts ‘upfront’ and a twist-beam suspension borrowed from locomotives ‘at the rear’. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to template journalism – if you have driven one, you can write about almost all of the cars rolling out of Europe and Japan. Trust me, all of them understeer and some, with diesel engines especially, will ‘exhibit some torque-steer’. That is it – if you can cleverly use these words, your road test is over and done with.
And then there is today. I take an Ambassador taxi to a dealership from where I am carted to yet another dealership in a Chevrolet Tavera and given a key to, hold your breath and stand up, a brand spanking for heavens sake new, Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupe. And I haven’t had a cutting chai, let alone caviar and champagne as I thumb the starter. Bloody brilliant day indeed then. Alas, I have two hours with this little ghost on wheels as against the three days that I spent writing about yet another transverse engined, front wheel driven, insipid bit of automotive insignificance. But guess what, you don’t need even two hours to understand this car. It took me 5.8 precious seconds only, because that is the time it took for the massive V12 to hoist the speedo above 100 kph. And trust me, the silent series of swear words that I uttered was more audible than the engine.
If you have not got the point yet, then here goes. Photographs cannot convey the size of the Phantom Coupe (now that is how you name cars – beats saying Nissan Micra any day!). This is a seriously big car, which weighs two and a half tonnes easily. It actually wears 21 inch wheels with enough rubber on them to send contraceptive companies scurrying for fresh procurement of raw material. And you don’t expect it to bolt out of its serene stand-still stance to 100 kph just like that. Imagine a decked-up elephant suddenly deciding to do a sprint and you get the picture. After adding a few worry lines to the face of the chauffeur (who was now seated in the back seat), I decided to stop experiencing the sheer acceleration and the rush that the Phantom Coupe offers. I got off and asked a colleague to go insane behind the wheel soon after. Why? Just to watch the magnificence of the whole thing. The sight of the Phantom Coupe lifting its nose as the direct-injection, 6749cc, twelve-cylinder monster of an engine summons all of 72 kgm of torque and 453 horses!
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