cars & life blog
I was expecting to read this news for a long time, an electric Rolls Royce. I know many people would think, there is no point to have an electric Rolls Royce or who is going to buy it! Actually those people miss one single point, Rolls Royce is owned by BMW. And BMW is keen on developing efficient vehicles and introduced technologies like Efficient Dynamics (And yesterday introduced its Intel CPU branded vehicle range i3 and i7). From this ambition, I was expecting to see a hybrid Rolls Royce. However Rolls Royce disappointed me and revealed an electric powered one!
That’s true, the mobile British palace Rolls Royce is going to have an electric version and it will be based on 102EX concept which is basically the Phantom. RR Phantom is my favourite car, this car is the definition of exquisite luxury and passion. Even though it is built by BMW, you don’t notice any BMW bit at all! It has best exterior design, best interior, comfort beyond your imagination. And a front grills which always remind me British Museum.
Let’s go back to electric RR. Phantom is a really huge car and despite its aluminium structure, it weight 2625 KG. And this makes Phantom one of the fattest cars on market and very hungry one. It is consuming or eating around 25lt/km (12mpg) in city! And we all know that, test figures cannot be achieved by normal human beings. So they are impossible. With a very basic analyses, in order to move this huge object with electric power; Phantom needs to carry batteries which should be able to power British Museum for one week! And this means extra weight. And this reduces the range.
Electric Rolls Royce is an important milestone for ultra-luxury vehicle segment and it is important to see that RR is adopting new driving technologies, and aiming to reduce consumption levels. However I still wonder how RR will manage to move this vehicle with batteries. Current battery technology is not very effective, if you don’t believe just check your laptop or mobile phone. They are still in huge size, despite the improvements in gadget technology. I am really looking forward to hear about the range and battery size! They will be impressive like its front grilles!
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Rolls Royce
For very long time I was trying understand what is wrong with German cars. I didn’t make mistake while writing, German cars. There is always something missing with them, I could not understand but German cars never have the same taste with Italian cars. Of course, I am not licking cars to identify their differences. I am pretty sure that all German cars would taste the same :)
And recently I found the problem with German cars. The huge problem which irritates me for very long and irritates many other people, I am using sales figures of Italian cars as a proof! German cars are offering everything; perfection, design (not all of them), efficient, luxury, perfect, gray, very gray, light gray, very dark gray and this goes forever. Germans cars are doing what you told them to do! Actually if a German car goes wrong, it terribly goes wrong. This happened in 2003-2004 with Mercedes E Class, electronic brake system and electronic control modules of C Class. Anyway, they don’t cause trouble anymore. The main thing is German cars are doing what they are supposed to do and they do not questionize. They just are doing it!
The Italian cars are like pizza, each pizza is a unique dish. It is nearly impossible to have the same pizza, even if you manage to have the same one you cannot eat in the same way. All the mozzarella cheese will try to go somewhere else, you will try to make some weird moves to eat the slice and some vegetables will fell on your trousers while you are trying to clean your trousers, your elbow will hit to pizza. Basically each time you try to eat an Italian food, you will have a new adventure like in Italian cars. Each Italian car is totally unique, I don’t know how they manage to do it but they are excellent at producing each car unique. There is no identical twin of a Ferrari 458 or Alfa Romeo MiTo or Fiat 500. Even if the factory is robotized, their supplier may not be robotized and their production technique might be influence the employees emotional conditions. 
Therefore each Italian car is like a sculpture, you cannot find the same one. And Italian cars do not react as you wished, try to control a Ferrari 599 GTO. Jeremy Clarkson tried to do it in “Italian Job” and he failed, try to control an Alfa MiTo diesel. The electronic systems will help you but the car will control you. You will do what the car is ordering you!
You can find this in British cars also, everything is excellent. Design, materials, engines but you cannot have a door closing aid in a Bentley Azure. This is a very basic technology from Germans, when your door is not fully closed the hydraulic system closes for you. But you cannot have this in a Bentley Azure! This car costs more than a country and you have to close your door properly by yourself. But still I like British cars they are combination of Mr. Bean and Paul Smith shirt!
British icon Rolls Royce started a new era for their marketing strategy. It is social media! Yes, after the new Ghost model they realized that there is a new world called internet and people use it for everything. Actually I haven’t met with Rolls Royce Twitter page or blog site but I saw their application for iPhone.
This software is one of the main reason to shift from Nokia to iPhone. You have a Rolls Royce logo in your mobile phone and it is free! That’s unbelievable. However that’s all for that application. Unfortunately it does not offer more than Zara’s application! With Zara’s application, you can look at shirts, t-shirts, shoes and etc. Of course you cannot try them from your mobile phone. And Rolls Royce did the same, you can configure your Rolls Royce Ghost and that’s all!
July is in the middle of summer with clear sky and hot temperatures which motivates us to go around air conditioned shopping centres for American readers shopping malls. Like the temperature is rising, the sales are rising which makes us to shop more. Don’t be excited, there is no %50 sales in Porsche or in Ferrari. I am talking about normal shops, where you can find normal goods without engine and wheels.
As you can see from the pictures, a great composition of British automotive industry was told. Yes, this t-shirt is telling every bit of British automotive industry. The way they combined different parts of different cars and created a new one, that’s excellent job for a fashion brand! However they missed the front grills of Rolls Royce and Bentley. But it can be acceptable.
Perfumes and cars are not directly related with each other. As the cars tends to make smoke and horrible smell for many years, nobody ever tried to put them together. Until the French car manufacturer, Citroën offered some kind of perfume kit for interior. But I have never seen someone who likes that stuff!
Recently Italian fashion brand Dsquared introduced a new perfume series called Wood. It name is not that attractive like other perfumes and I ignored its advertisement on magazines. When I saw it in stores, I found it interesting! The bottle was covered with wood! Yes, matte wood. If you are interested on cars, you will understand what I am saying. Wood, a real wood looks magnificent inside the car and light wood interior looks much better than carbon fibre. As I saw the wood covered bottle, I tried the tester. Surprisingly, it was smelling better than I expected. Dsquared2 was never in my radar, as it is charging huge amount of prices for their designs. Contrary, the wood covered and has the impression of interior of a luxury car was a great idea.
Actually Porsche Design should have done this earlier with their metal covered perfume bottle, because I never liked it. It has the impression of forgotten car part. And nobody wants to have a bottle which looks like a air filter.
If you are planning to buy a perfume and have a cool looking luxury bottle, try Dsquared Wood. Honestly, it can be purchased just for the bottle also. However if you own a Rolls Royce or Bentley, you can ignore it, because you already have enough wood inside your car :)
Gumball 3000 is not my favourite motoring event. Actually, I don’t like the idea of racing on public roads while people are driving without knowing that you are racing. Also the way they dress up the cars! There are always very nice cars in this race; Rolls Royce, Bentley, Bugatti and others. These brands have heritage and unique character but dressing up these cars for like you go to a Halloween party is not looking very nice to me! This is totally objective. Actually, I don’t like to modify cars in any way!
A few days ago Gumball 3000 started again and as usual there are many very nice cars. The most pathetic one was the Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe. This car is the Rolls Royce’s very unique model with an exquisite design and I can clearly state this; Phantom Drophead Coupe is the most elegant, the best looking, the most exquisite car on planet. Every single detail of this car is excellent. However it appeared on Gumball 3000 in pink colour! Like this, you can see from the picture. This is the time, words became senseless. You can watch this on 03:08 from the Youtube video.
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Recently Rolls Royce started to offer a new car; small, affordable, more accessible, for every day. That’s Rolls Royce Ghost which costs more than £200,000 in UK without any options or any other customization! When you consider with its big brother Rolls Royce Phantom and mega yachts, Ghost is a reasonable luxury car. Unlike Phantom, it is designed to be driven by its owner :) When you buy a Phantom, you are not supposed to drive by yourself, you have it have a driver! And this huge problem of hiring someone to drive your Rolls Royce emerged the idea of Ghost :)
Nowadays, when we talk about British cars, our brain reminds us something! There are no pure British cars are left, I mean the main brands. A quick flash back; Land Rover and Jaguar (Tata), Aston Martin (ProDrive and Kuwait Investment), Bentley (VW), Rolls Royce and Mini (BMW). So; when we see a British car, we will see something which is not British. However; this became normal in automotive industry, many brands are owned by some other brands. I don’t stick on that too much, as long as the brand’s heritage and spirit are alive, different companies can be their owners.
However; I cannot say British cars have very good reputation in reliability and offer competitive high technology. If we compare with German cars, there is a huge gap between them. Actually, there is a huge gap between German cars and whole world! The interesting thing with British brands is their spirit did not die, despite the adverse things happened to them. We still turn our heads and look at the new Jaguar XJ or we want to own a Range Rover or win lottery and experience exquisite time with a Rolls Royce Ghost. All these dreams are supplying blood to British brands. But how did this happen? Why don’t we feel the same excitement to a Mercedes S350CDi 4MATiC or to a Audi A6 2.8 Quattro or to a Toyota Avensis?
All those brands have something in common. The visibility factor; yes their quantity is too much to be exclusive. And this is the main obstacle, however Maybach is very rare but people don’t rush to it. This shows the importance of brand heritage. Italian cars have similar characteristics with British cars and they are very exclusive but they don’t bring the combination of different materials to create luxury interior, we don’t feel like we are inside a British palace. Porsche is a car to be loved but its product range is too wide for a dream. Nobody wants to dreams a cheaper car. And complicated engine range, you need to learn which engine is better than others. 
I am not saying those are cars bad or inadequate to be exclusive. Those cars are more reliable, offers wide range of choice. You could live your dreams with sacrificing your future wealth. Drives very well, performance is great. Actually, most of the British cars are good for watching. Ferrari offers great technology, great sound. I would prefer Ferrari over an Aston Martin. Mercedes offers everything better than Jaguar. Porsche is the perfection. But we all look at an Aston Martin DBS, when we hear it is approaching to us. That’s something which cannot be described with words! Is it power? No, most of the Mercedes AMG models offer more power. Is it brand heritage, who can remember everything about that brand so quickly. Or is it the design? Ferrari has fantastic look also. British cars are showing our dreams in real life. If we want to buy one, other alternative might be offering a better car. However if we have chance, I am pretty sure that we would like to drive an Aston Martin or Bentley Azure for some time.