Can you see something in this picture that makes all the Bentley Continental GTs on the block look as common as Skodas? Oh wait, the Conti GTs on this block were as common as Skodas. After all, this is Prague’s Pařížská street. Still don’t see something Madeira Red? Let’s zoom in.
No, it’s not the Jetta tucked behind the bicyclist, it’s the football-field-dwarfing Madeira Red Rolls Royce Phantom. Can you see the Mitsubishi Colt parked to its right? If you think you’re catching a glimpse of the white Colt, that’s just the Phantom bending light around its supermassive, superdense superstructure. You shouldn’t be able to see the Colt at all from this angle.
Compared to the Mitsubishi Colt next to it, it just doesn’t. Someone from a different planet, say Mars, would scarcely believe that both objects fulfill the same purpose of getting from A to B. Hell, I barely believe it. Now there’s nothing wrong with a little Japanese runabout, but small British planets with children orbiting around them are something else entirely. Look, it needed to pull up onto the tight Prague curb just to fit in the parking space.
And if i’m not mistaken, I could have sworn that I saw light waves bending around the Phantom. You caught that too? Good, I’m not dreaming then. But in order for the Phantom planet to bend light, it has to act as a gravitational lens. What kind of mass is necessary to bend light so significantly? Anything that is big enough to make 22″ wheels looks average, small even.
And yet, despite its nifty electromagnetic wave-bending properties, what amazes most are the external dimensions of the Roller. At 5.83 metres in length, it’s as long as 23,320,000,000 aluminum atoms lined up in a row. That’s an interesting factoid because the Phantom’s spaceframe chassis is actually made from the 13th placeholder on the Periodic Table of the Elements. I can finally appreciate what Peter Orosz was talking about when he visited the BMW Dingolfing factory where the Phantom’s frame is assembled.
While I didn’t manage to hear the V12 of this Madeira Red sedan thunder into life, a few hours later that evening, I caught an Arctic white Drophead Coupe just as its owner and his wife were leaving the Barock restaurant on Pařížská street. This video shows that far from sounding like Thor’s angry hammer, this Rolls Royce sounds like you’re inside Alcantara-lined submarine. Shhh… the first ten seconds tell the whole story.