“It can also be a safety issue,” Joerg says. On the other hand, humans don’t actually enjoy total silence, as anyone who has ever experienced an anechoic chamber will attest. He and his team are on the lookout for ‘hidden inputs’, and interrogate every component for unwelcome vibrations. In the Spectre, the sound of a pin dropping on the lambswool rug could send the otherwise mild-mannered Joerg into an apoplexy. There’s nowhere for even the tiniest squeak, vibration or wind noise kerfuffle to hide. Then again, Rolls-Royce is all about chasing perfection and an electric powertrain poses some very specific challenges in that regard. Joerg insists that the car TG.com is driving is about 65 per cent done, but it feels much closer to the finish line than that. Spectre project leader Joerg Wunder is riding shotgun, as he and the team near the end of a globe-straddling two million-mile testing regimen. Yes, on some spectacular roads about 90 minutes from Cape Town, on the Franschhoek Pass and through the Mont Rochelle nature reserve (watch out for the snakes and baboons). You worked all this out from a drive in a pre-production car? The Spectre might be the best solution to the UK’s pothole epidemic, albeit a rather expensive one. So there’s a limit to what its engineers can do in the face of physics.Īs on the Ghost, the Spectre has the Planar suspension system, which adds a mechanical mass damper on the upper wishbone on the front suspension to enhance body control. It’s five metres long, two metres wide and weighs over three tonnes with even a modestly proportioned human behind the wheel. The Spectre is definitely more spirited but it’s still no sports car. Remember, the Rolls Phantom is a car that can be driven with a finger-tip touch on the wheel, and has a memorable grace and delicacy to its responses despite being the size of a small building. It’s an idea Müller-Ötvös gives particular emphasis to. So how does the Spectre feel?Īctually, ‘feel’ is the key word, though not perhaps in the traditional road-testy sense. Now they can take the obsession even further. What better way to achieve automotive Zen and total mechanical refinement than by replacing the single biggest source of noise, vibration and harshness with a seamless, silent electric powertrain? Although Rolls had pretty much eliminated every trace of NVH anyway. But electrification suits the Rolls-Royce mission, right?Ībsolutely.
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