Today, Rolls-Royce finally revealed its Spectre EV. It’s big, fast, pretty, and it’ll cost nearly half a million dollars. To me, a Poor who will likely never even see one of these in person, the full reveal of this luxobarge means very little. But along with that announcement came a far more impactful release: the Spectre’s configurator.
Playing around in a luxury car configurator is one of the few pure joys in life, like petting a kitten’s stomach or getting your speeding ticket thrown out in court. But, with the Spectre’s configurator coming from Rolls-Royce, one might expect it to go even above and beyond the luxury norm. One would be right. This configurator is batshit, and I want to talk about it.
The Exterior
I know, you want to talk about the umbrella, but we need to work our way there. Let’s start outside, where most people start with a car, unless they’re born inside of it and first experience the world through polarised glass. Rolls-Royce has graced us with fifteen separate configurable options on the exterior, from paint colours and wheels down to wheel-accent colours and which specific Spirit of Ecstasy you’d like. I went with a Spirit that’s not illuminated itself, but uplit from the hood. I’m classy like that.
My chosen exterior is about as cotton candy as Rolls will let you get. There are more saturated colours, but they’re all greens or yellows or cobalt blues. I understand that painting your car like a Jazz cup is maybe not the most Excellent in the company’s eyes, but in this imaginary experience I’m the customer. I’m right. Give me bright colours.
Coachlines and Wheel “Centres”
We get it, Rollingsworth Roycington. You’re British. As I sit here at my computre, going ovre the sheer numbre of options on the Spectre, I am not allowed to forget the UK-ness of this company.
Where was I? Right, coachlines and wheel centers. See that little blue line running through the door handle? That’s apparently a coachline, which can also be had on the hood as a front fender accent. It’s matched to that ring around the wheels’ RR logos, if you so choose. But, you may notice that it doesn’t match the blue atop my perfect Spectre. That’s certainly an option, but I went for something different. Instead, I had that coachline match…
…The Interior Accents
Now we’re talking, baby. This is the level of brightness I want on the exterior, but I’ll happily take it on the interior as well. These colours are vibrant, joyful, and a little absurd. I cannot fathom who they’re for, but I deeply appreciate Rolls throwing them out as options.
(They’re for me. I would daily the hell out of this interior.)
But of course, interior colours on their own don’t mean much. You have to put them in places, and ooh does Rolls-Royce give us some places to put them. Let’s explore a few.
The Seats
Now, let me be clear. This list of seven separate colour choices is not exhaustive. There are further options that impact the rear seats and the headrests. Rolls, in its infinite wisdom, limited interior colour choices to your big three “Interior Style” colours. Presumably, this is meant to avoid a Golf Harlequin situation with bits of interior trim, but it also helps to ensure that no colours clash. These don’t clash, by the way. These are perfect.
Some of these colours spill on to the doors, as well. The colour of your upper seat follows through onto the door handles. This is actually my main qualm with this section of the interior: I would love to have made those both blue, but that also colours the front of the headrests. If that was split off, and the upper seatback only matched the armrest, it would be perfect. This is the only thing stopping me from buying a Spectre, really. That and the lack of a bright blue seatbelt option.
The Doors
Come on baby, light my door trim. Yes, the door cards here are full of lights. Rolls took its Starlight headliner, already an option I once considered adding to my old $US11,000 ($15,270) Subaru station wagon, and decided to offer it as a door. What will they think of next?
Like the seats, the doors have seven separate options for colour locations. This entire interior, really, is a paint-by-numbers exercise — only you’re deciding what corresponds to colours one, two, and three.
The Carpet
Sure, I guess you could have black, or grey, or tan carpets in your car. That’s fine. They keep your shoes from getting scuffed up by the metal floor. But you can’t tell me that, if you had the option, you would do anything other than a bright-blue, colour-matched-to-the-seat floor mat.
And the carpet that the floor mats sit on, too, is customisable. Seven colour options, with the separate toggle to either leave the trunk carpeting black or colour-match it to the interior.
The Gauges
Many modern cars offer you multiple gauge options, in the form of a digital cluster that changes based on your drive mode. Few will offer you hybrid analogue gauges with a custom faceplate from the factory, and fewer still will give you eleven different choices for that face.
You also have the option to select any number of colours for the inside of the steering wheel. I could have picked pink or blue, in continuing with my whole theme here, but I didn’t. I restrained myself. I picked white, because I’m classy like that.
The Umbrella
Rolls includes the option of not having a custom-coloured umbrella, instead giving buyers a default black. This is patently absurd. Any person who purchases a vehicle of this cost and doesn’t spring for the colour-matched umbrella should be eyed with total suspicion — they are likely a hostile extraterrestrial, unaccustomed to human societal norms. They don’t get us.
The Spectre configurator, as a whole, is an exercise in excess. The full list of option categories, after leaving the “Inspiration Lounge” at the beginning of the configurator, looks like this:
- Exterior
- Spirit of Ecstasy
- Wheel Style
- Coachline
- Grille
- Interior
- Fascia
- Steering Wheel
- IP Modules
- Seat Modules
- Door Modules
- Centre Modules
- Headliner
- Rear Module
- Leather Detailing
- Headrest
- Umbrella
- Treadplates
- Privacy
- Carpet & Floormats
- Signature Key
- Bespoke
- Module Editing
- Signature Key
- Coloured Instrument Dials
Some of these contain duplicates, of course, but there’s a simply absurd number of options to be messed around with. Here’s the configurator link. Go wild.