2027 Rolls-Royce Black Badge Spectre | UK Review

It’s barely five minutes since we drove the original Black Badge Spectre. The Series II ‘facelift’ arrives four years after Rolls-Royce launched its fully electric coupe, with the most potent one already on the price lists.

Your eyes don’t deceive you – this is an exceedingly subtle update. Beneath the skin, its battery has swelled in size, its usable capacity rising from 102 to 112kWh to boost its WLTP range claim by almost a fifth, now 390 miles. Charging times are 14 per cent quicker, too, slicing about five minutes from owners’ very infrequent visits to a public DC hook-up. See, the Spectre – the brand’s second bestseller behind the Cullinan – is most owners’ second Rolls-Royce and sits in a collection of seven cars. It’s charged almost exclusively on its home wall box and serves to potter around locally on pure pleasure drives. While its range now borders on the road-trippable, a Spectre buyer is more likely to hop on a jet to cover big mileage…

The standard dual-motor, four-wheel-drive Spectre has seen its peak outputs rise to 601hp and 749lb ft (up from 585hp and 660lb ft), while this halo Black Badge edition now claims 680hp and 811lb ft (formerly 650hp and 793lb ft). You push the BB’s ‘Infinity Mode’ steering wheel button to free its full, unfiltered output, which unlocks a 4.3-second sprint from 0-62mph via launch control (sorry, ‘Spirited Mode’). With a bit of extra battery mass to haul around, it’s no quicker than its predecessor. And I couldn’t care less. The quickest performance EVs have a perceived arrogance to their whipcrack acceleration, a “look at what I can do” smugness that keeps you as the driver at a deliberate arm’s length. Beside them, the Black Badge Spectre hugs you tight and brings you along on the journey, allowing you precious extra seconds with your right foot nestled in its deep-pile carpet as it conjures a small degree of magic in making over 800lb ft of instantly available torque completely manageable.

The result is performance that’s an enthralling and frequent joy, not a twice-tried novelty that makes your head spin. It goes arm-in-arm with the handling; Rolls doesn’t list any dynamic changes for the Series II, and it drives much as before, with the same assertively aloof swagger as a Ghost, Phantom or Cullinan. Making all your cars drive with the same, cloud-like insouciance is quite a trick. Yet the Spectre still has command of a tight, twisting road, never losing its cool even if you try to manhandle it around. It favours a smoothly maintained pace rather than anything more boisterous, and while the DSC can be flicked through Sport and into Off, it doesn’t seem to tolerate bashful inputs. The Spectre just keeps calm and carries on.

The sharper throttle of Infinity mode skims a little of that calmness, mind, and the ginormous forged 23s of Black Badge spec can tangibly shimmy around over a repeatedly rugged road surface – nothing you’d even begin to qualify as ‘poor ride quality’, just a sense of something going on beneath this otherwise anechoic chamber of a car. I quite like the human element it brings.

Same goes for the ‘Rolls-Royce Sound’ activated within the pleasingly wee central touchscreen. Like its distant BMW cousins, it’s a faux electronic warble that accompanies your acceleration. Only here it’s extremely hushed and gentle, free of the Hans Zimmer theatrics. Perhaps its most crucial role is reminding you this is the electric Rolls – the Spectre otherwise represents a very subtle transition over an old V12-powered Wraith in a way that flatters the refinement of both cars.

Feeling too coddled from the outside world? You can drop all four windows for the full pillarless coupe experience. I’ll admit it’s not the true definition of luxury in the Yorkshire Dales on a wet, windy October afternoon, but for zipping past the clichéd South of France beaches or down the Pacific Coast Highway on a roasting hot day it will feel utterly fabulous. The whole car does. It takes a short while to get your eye in (especially its helium-light steering), and to appreciate it’s not going to bend to its driver’s will like most other 700-horsepower two-doors can. Yet while the steering never demonstrates traditional weight or resistance into a corner, you can still confidently point the Spirit of Ecstasy right where you want to go and the Spectre simply picks up its haunches and propels you there.

For its owners, true involvement is delivered in a different way. It’s present from the moment they walk in to specify the car and begin recreating whatever wildly bespoke vision has occupied their head in the weeks and months before. The only Rolls-Royce customised to a higher degree is the halo Phantom, proving that buyers have welcomed this EV the proper Goodwood way.

As a result, there’s a host of new options on the Series II to reflect their fervour. Our test car wore the (to these eyes, questionable) sage-hued ‘Duality Twill’ textile, which claims up to 2.6 million stitches and 10 miles of thread in its construction, plus the new dashboard clock ‘vitrine’ with a miniature Lady Eleanor inside. Outside is a new matte black pack for the grille surround and door handles, among other details – though Rolls-Royce refuses to equip the grille itself with anything other than signature polished metal. The potential to customise it well beyond its £325,000 starting price is, of course, close to limitless. As you might hope for a car that continues to feel utterly ethereal. And if the keenest drivers are left wanting on their favourite road, doubltess solace can be found among the half-dozen other cars available to them. In terms of imperiousness, the Spectre remains in a class of one.

Engine: Dual motors, 112kWh (usable) battery, 195kW max charging
Transmission: Single-speed, all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 680
Torque (lb ft): 811
0-62mph: 4.3secs
Top speed: 155mph
Weight: 2,925kg
Range: 390 miles
Efficiency: 3.1mi/kWh
Price: from £325,000