[Gallery] Wraith Black Badge Landspeed at FOS | GRR
Presenting the newly unveiled Wraith Black Badge Landspeed Collection at the 2021 Goodwood Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard, Rolls-Royce are showing all and sundry what it means to go above and beyond on the details of car design.
Put together to commemorate the records set by Captain George Eyston and his Landspeed Thunderbolt that was kitted out with huge Rolls-Royce R V12 aero engines, our West Sussex neighbours have made sure the Wraith Black Badge Landspeed does its ancestors proud.
Finished in two-tone liveries that purposefully evoke the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, where Eyston achieved his record-breaking runs between 1937 and 1938, this particular version in Black Diamond Metallic with a Bespoke Bonneville Blue hue looks lavish yet classic. As is to be expected from Rolls-Royce. It’s a paint job that transitions under sunlight from light blue to silver, illustrating the reflections created by the vast sky Bonneville skies and the moon-like salt flats against the Thunderbolt’s sheet aluminium bodywork. Nice.
But Rolls being Rolls, this is only the tip of the iceberg. The interiors department wanted a piece of the action too and have created a stunning Starlight Headliner that mimics the actual night sky and the constellations visible on the 16th of September 1938, when Eyston set his third and final land-speed record of 357.497mph. Even the elegant clock just right of the touchscreen is modelled after period gauges used in the Thunderbolt.
Powered itself by a hefty but oh-so-smooth V12 engine and having received the Black Badge treatment in an effort to appeal to ever-younger, hipper audiences, the Wraith Black Badge Landspeed is luxurious, intriguing and exciting in equal measure. And certainly one for those with a keen sense of history and occasion. We love it.
Photography by James Lynch.