Rolls Royce is betting big on electric power and is getting ready to launch its first EV, the Spectre coupe, later this year. The arrival of the Spectre means the end of the road for the Wraith and also V12-powered Rolls Royce coupes, period, and the German-owned Brit luxury brand couldn’t resist sending both off in style.
Well, the Black Badge Wraith Black Arrow’s bright yellow ‘Club Leather’ seats and steering wheel might not be everybody’s idea of style, but they’re also kind of appropriate because they showcase how much bolder and youthful Rolls Royce has grown as a brand since the Wraith was first introduced in 2013, and also have a neat connection to the brand’s V12 past.
The Black Badge Wraith Black Arrow takes inspiration from Captain George Eyston’s Thunderbolt, a 15,400-lbs (7,000 kg) land speed record machine that used its two Rolls Royce V12 Aero engines to achieve a world record of 357.497 mph (575.335 km/h) at Bonneville in 1938.
Sadly, the runout Wraith doesn’t get a second 624 hp (632 PS), 6.6-liter V12, but it does borrow some aesthetic touches from Thunderbolt, whose polished aluminum body made it hard for observers to see when the racer had passed the timing equipment. Eyston’s solution was to paint a giant black arrow on the side of the car with a yellow circle, which links to the final Wraith’s seat color and front bumper inserts.
Related: All Future Rolls-Royce Models Will Be Electric, Boss Confirms
Easily the coolest detail as far as we’re concerned is the exploded diagram of a V12 engine engraved on the aluminum dashboard – we’d love to see this idea picked up by other marques. But it’s far from the only example of Rolls Royce’s incredible attention to detail. The paint finish merges Celebration Silver and Black Diamond and features a glass-infused ‘Crystal’ layer that is designed to mimic motion blur and apparently gives the surface “a subtle texture inspired by the crusted surface of the Bonneville Salt Flats,” despite being polished for a marathon 12 hours to achieve a glassy finish.
Inside, Rolls’ famous Starlight headliner gets another outing, but in a nod to Eyston’s record-setting exploits, it features 2,117 fiber-optic stars, the most the company has ever fitted to a car. The arrangement shows the Milky Way and star constellations exactly as the crowd at Utah would have seen them in September 1938, though we presume Eyston was too busy looking at the salt to notice.
Rolls Royce hasn’t revealed prices for the Black Badge Wraith Black Arrow, but if you have to ask you clearly weren’t one of the 12 clients who have already been allocated a car before the rest of us even knew about it.
