Fresh from the hugely successful Digital Dawn online launch on September 8th 2015, which saw the new Rolls-Royce Dawn’s debut trending #1 worldwide on Google and watched by 4,000 media around the world – the new benchmark in open-top luxury motoring made its World Premiere at the Frankfurt International Motor Show on September 15th 2015.
Using the medium of early morning dawn light resulting in a burst of sunshine, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars revealed the most social and seductive of motor cars to media assembled at the Rolls-Royce Villa.
“Our new Rolls-Royce Dawn promises a striking, seductive encounter like no other Rolls-Royce to date, and begins a new age of open-top, super-luxury motoring. Dawn is a beautiful new motor car that offers the most uncompromised open-top motoring experience in the world. It will be the most social of super-luxury drophead motor cars for those who wish to bathe in the sunlight of the world’s most exclusive social hotspots. Quite simply, it is the sexiest Rolls-Royce ever built.” said Torsten Mueller-Oetvoes, Chief Executive Officer, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
“…Accept nothing nearly right or good enough.”
Compromise is not a word recognised in the Rolls-Royce lexicon. Indeed the company continues to live by the clarion cry of co-founder Sir Henry Royce to “Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it. Accept nothing nearly right or good enough.”
The final part of that maxim – “Accept nothing nearly right or good enough” has guided the Rolls-Royce design and engineering teams as they have worked to initiate a new age for open-top, super-luxury motoring. In a sector exclusively populated by the biggest of automotive compromises – the 2+2 seat configuration – Rolls-Royce accepted no compromise.
And so, the new Rolls-Royce Dawn, the world’s only true modern four-seater super-luxury drophead, is born.
The new Rolls-Royce Dawn stands apart from its stable mates, featuring 80% unique body panels.
Indeed such attention has been paid to ensuring this amazing new dawn for super-luxury motoring delivers on its promise, even the tyres that connect the new Rolls-Royce Dawn to the road are new.
The Silent Ballet
Specific engineering and manufacturing attention has been paid to the creation of the Dawn’s roof. Unheard of anywhere in the modern motor industry until now, the roof of the Rolls-Royce Dawn delivers the silence of a Wraith when up and operates in almost complete silence in just over 20 seconds at a cruising speed of up to 31mph.
Working with a fabric roof configuration, the Rolls-Royce engineering team set themselves a challenging goal which they were unwilling to compromise on – to make the quietest convertible car in the world today. This quest for silence applied to all aspects of the engineering of the new roof and by extension the new motor car.
Firstly, the passengers’ on-board aural experience roof up and roof down while in motion had to be pure Rolls-Royce. The design of the roof had to be graceful, beautiful and sensuous whilst remaining one of the largest canopies to grace a convertible car. Indeed, the Dawn’s roof is the second largest fabric roof applied to a current production car, second only to that of the Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe.
The silent lowering of the soft top – dubbed “The Silent Ballet” by Rolls-Royce engineers – transforms the Rolls-Royce Dawn, delivering a true Dawn moment. In hero specification of Midnight Sapphire exterior and Mandarin leather interior, night becomes day as rays of sunshine burst forth, bringing the inside out, joining this social space with the wider world of possibilities.
It is safe to say that the new Rolls-Royce Dawn is the quietest open-top car ever made.
2+2 ≠ 4
“In the world of Rolls-Royce, day to day mathematical norms don’t always apply. That’s why I say in the case of the new Rolls-Royce Dawn, 2+2 does not equal 4.” said Giles Taylor, Director of Design, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.
Studying the open-top motor car sector, and specifically its high-value luxury niche, it became apparent to Rolls-Royce’s designers that customers were being short-changed. The myopic focus on one specific configuration – the 2+2 setup – was, in the view of Rolls-Royce, a compromise too far.
A 2+2 is a configuration with seating that favours the driver and passenger in the front leaving two smaller seats for occasional passengers or children in the rear. The result is a sector populated exclusively by open-top cars that Rolls-Royce would consider compromised and ‘anti-social’.
“At Rolls-Royce, we pride ourselves as creators of fine motor cars that also serve as social spaces,” comments Taylor. “The idea of creating a car like Dawn that can be used in comfort by only two adults on a day to day basis is anathema. In creating Dawn we have accepted no compromise to the comfort and luxury of four adults who want to travel together in the pinnacle of style.”
A whole new car
Contrary to media speculation, the new Rolls-Royce Dawn is not a Wraith drophead. 80% of the exterior body panels of the new Dawn are newly designed to accommodate an evolution of Rolls-Royce’s design language and to encapsulate highly contemporary, four-seat super-luxury drophead architecture.
The aim was clear. To do what no other car manufacturer had achieved so far – make a car that looks as beautiful with its roof up as with it down. One could almost say that the result of the design team’s restless endeavours has been to make the new Rolls-Royce Dawn two cars in one.
Roof down, the sexiness of the Rolls-Royce Dawn is even more apparent. From the side the steep rake of the windscreen, the swage line that flows over the rear haunches plus the high beltline that rises along the profile give the impression of effortless swiftness. The very same rising beltline wraps around the rear passenger cabin akin to the collar of a jacket pulled up to protect the neck.
The deck itself is an amazing work of modern craftsmanship. Clothed in open-pore Canadel panelling that traces the horse-shoe shape of the rear cabin, it demonstrates the great advances that the craftspeople in the Woodshop at the Home of Rolls-Royce in Goodwood have made in wood crafting technology and techniques.
The wood on the deck, chosen by the customer to suit their individual taste, flows down the ‘Waterfall’ between the rear seats, and around the cabin clothing the interior door panels and enticing the owner to enter Dawn.
Deliveries on the new Rolls-Royce Dawn commence in the second quarter of 2016.
