Driving a $430,000 Rolls-Royce Ghost reminded me that opulence has no limits and neither does my mediocrity

• The $330,000 Rolls-Royce Ghost sedan recently underwent a full redesign for the first time in 10 years, complete with starlight patterns twinkling across its ceiling and dashboard. 
• The car’s Austin debut was my first time in a Rolls-Royce. My test car had a full $100,000 in optional features, bringing its sticker to $430,000.
• The experience was a clash of two realities: the Rolls-Royce I’d fabricated in my mind and the Rolls-Royce that surrounded me.
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To most, a Rolls-Royce is more an idea than a car. It might have four wheels, seat belts, and a steering wheel, but those are secondary to the abstraction: a land yacht that doesn’t roll across roads but slides across glass, floating on a cloud of affluence and ostentatious display. Few have the status or wealth necessary to climb through its coach doors, which automatically open outward at the tug of a switch or push of a button, yet it’s hard to imagine anything other than a cloud of opulence waiting for passengers on the other side. 

That’s the thing about a Rolls-Royce. It comes with expectations — nay, conceptions — whether you’re at the wheel or your chauffeur is. 

That includes the $330,000 Ghost, a sedan introduced in 2009 as a smaller, less expensive choice for those not quite in the ballpark of the $460,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom yet. The Ghost can be optioned up toward the Phantom’s starting price, of course, but not everyone person wants to spend that extra cash. 

The Ghost went relatively unchanged for a decade after its debut, aside from a few tweaks and a 2014 refresh. But earlier this year, Rolls teased the all-new Ghost along with its all-new identity: “post opulence,” aka displays of exorbitant wealth that don’t “shout, but rather, whisper.”

Minimalism, you might call it. You might also call it “trying to blend in amid the inevitable peasant uprising.”

Rolls-Royce said the new Ghost, like the old one, is designed to "resonate with clients for the next 10 years." But today's Rolls-Royce is different from the one of 2010: Between then and 2019, the average age of the company's customers dropped from 56 to 43.

There wasn't just an age shift. Rolls noticed a character shift, too. 

"Due to Ghost's energetic, dynamic personality, clients came to realise that the Rolls-Royce brand could offer more than a chauffeur-driven experience," the company said upon announcing the new car. "Indeed, in the United States of America and areas of Europe, clients were self-driving their Ghost from the very early stages of its introduction."

That's why you might notice the Phantom to be more back-heavy and the Ghost to be more even — one is meant for chauffeur duty and the other for shared responsibility.

The only things that would be carried over from the old Ghost into the new one, Rolls said, were the automaker's Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament and its famous umbrellas.

Yet the final product, which debuted in Austin in September, took strong cues from the last car.

Stepping into a Rolls-Royce for the first time, as I did at the Ghost launch, was a clash of two realities: the Rolls-Royce I'd fabricated in my mind and the Rolls-Royce I was actually inside. It was both this distant idea and this thing that was right in front of me, at the same time. The extraterrestrial became the terrestrial, with me sitting right in the center of it as the carmaker's famed starlight headliner (now with shooting stars!) glowed above me.

It might be noon and clear as day outside, but in a Rolls-Royce, you remain a star among stars. At least, I think that's what they're trying to tell you. It's what I'd want to hear from someone on the other side of my $500,000 check. 

My first trip in the new Ghost came with a chauffeur, who drove me to a launch event as I sat in the back seat poking and handling everything I could. I now regret leaving finger grease all over the car.

"Have you felt the floor mats?" the driver asked. 

I had, in a way. Immediately upon getting in, the ground below me became soft. Pillowy. How I imagine every billionaire's white, ethereal movie room — or whatever the most comfortable area of their house is — would be like to sit in.

I then took another look at my black heeled combat boots, which seemed fashionable and appropriate just minutes ago, and remembered I'd last worn them to trudge around New York City in January. They now seemed dirty. Unworthy to grace this pristine white lambswool. As if I should take them off immediately. 

But if I take them off, I thought, will I look like a weirdo trying to dig her stinky toes into this fancy car's fancy amenities? The classic lose-lose situation. 

So, no, I hadn't felt them physically. But I'd felt them, socially and emotionally. I took the driver's words as a cue to reach down and actually feel them without looking like a total nerd, my fingers getting lost in what must have been inches of wool. 

I don't remember what I said in response, but I do remember feeling even worse about the shoes.

Actually driving the car came with a host of other crises. "Get in and familiarize yourself," the team at the launch told us. After a few minutes, someone came to my window. "Any questions?" 

A few. What does this button do? What about the fancy dial thingy in the center-console area? How do I adjust the mirrors? How did someone like me, a lowly Criss Angel stan who happens to write about cars, get on this invite list? 

As to not look too stupid, I boiled my list down to one question — the existential question, which I'd never really asked before and didn't think to research beforehand. "How do I put it in 'drive'?"

And off we went. Some of the first entries in my meticulous drive notes on the Ghost went like this: 

• WHERE ARE THE CLIMATE CONTROLS 
• Keep reaching to pull the door closed, but you have to use the button so the car will close the door for you! I am a sucker for manual labor!
• THE VOLUME KNOB WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME THE WHOLE TIME 

You see, a Rolls-Royce interior is its own species, not to be bothered with silly things like "labels" or "familiar placement of controls," because labels and familiarity are for those unworthy of a $430,000 car like this one — complete with its $332,000 starting price and $100,000 in optional features. A Rolls-Royce interior is one you have to adjust to, where the buttons and knobs aren't in the same place as they usually are and where the climate controls don't show the interior temperatures in blocky, alarm-clock looking numbers. 

Everything inside of a Rolls is delicately integrated into a silky design, meant to be beautiful to the eyes and easy to the touch. If you're used to driving cars not in the half-million price range, that makes it hard as hell to find anything. 

After several rounds of "Damn it! Damn it! It's cold in here!" at stoplights, I finally found the most important object on my search: the climate dials. Their red and blue colorations were so faint that I hadn't picked up on them, and their designs so smooth that it never occurred to me that those dials did anything. 

I slid the smooth dial all the way red, sat back, and found peace. 

The peace wasn't long for this world. I hadn't cared much about the radio up until that point, but you know what they say about life: When you solve one problem, you discover three more. 

Soft snaps from the intro to 2 Chainz's "It's a Vibe" began to bump through what I can only assume were the fanciest speakers I've ever listened to, at volume levels far too low for such a tune.

I instinctively reached for a volume knob near the bottom corner of the infotainment screen, to be met with nothing. I poked around the screen. Nothing. I twisted and tugged every knob I could reach. Nothing. I zoomed in and out of the navigation map with one knob. No luck.

All the while, 2 Chainz bragged through my still-quiet speakers: OK, so I got the ambiance just where I want it. 

Lucky you, 2 Chainz. 

I found the volume knob about 10 minutes after the song ended, tucked so perfectly into the dashboard's open-pore wood that I thought it was there for decoration. The radio was, finally, a vibe. I was obviously not.

The Ghost, once you learn its alien rituals and control knobs, is a mystical being. It's a staple of not only the wealthiest among us, but what awaits them: a vertical-slat grille that's iconic in design alone, yet has a warm backlight to make the car glow at night. Rolls' staple starlight headliner, made not from stamping the parts through a factory but by cutting fiber optics by hand to create individual stars in a "random but uniform" imitation of the night sky. A 6.75-liter, twin-turbocharged V12 engine whose claimed 563 horsepower has an unmatched duality: slick and quiet for chauffeurs, yet able to rocket up to speed with a punch of the gas pedal.

Features so intricate that each fold-away tray table, cupholder, and emblem can slide into various positions so gracefully, they're more reminiscent of ballet performers than anything belonging in a car. A hood emblem so fancy that should you fear theft, it'll fold into the bonnet and hide away until you've returned to your gated community. 

The Ghost is defined by its extras — unnecessary in theory, yet magical in practice. But much like Disneyland or whatever loosely governed hellscape Elon Musk wants to create on Mars, I guess anything can be magical at a certain price point. 

Before I stepped into one, a Rolls-Royce was more of a concept than anything concrete: a floating, mystical being unconnected to the road or world around it, because the world around it simply isn't worthy. It still largely is a concept — a big, sparkly cloud in my mind labeled "fancy."

But driving the Ghost came with the realization that it's more of a car than I ever imagined. The road below and the world around it don't disappear, they're simply numbed — with surrounding cars heard and potholes felt, ever so faintly, to remind its owners that they aren't in Heaven yet, but they could definitely afford the penthouse suite when they get there. 

As for me, a humble blogger cosplaying a Rolls-Royce driver for the day, I learned a few things about myself as well. Namely, I learned there are two types of people in this world: those whose $430,000 Rolls-Royce Ghosts include fancy lambswool floor mats, and bystanders who just want to dig their crusty appendages into them. 

"Oh dude," my colleague Kristen Lee said. "When I saw those, I wanted to strip naked and live in them." 

You could probably guess which group we belong in.

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