i am glad the continental T has been brought up
in the T the clear lineage of the brroklands can be seen, a design langauge that goes back to the 80's with some 90's tweakings, nothing groundbreaking but in itself not inherently bad.
with the brroklands you are getting the last whiff of the old arnage, the ultimate expression of what will soon be a defunct concept entirely making way to something new and hopefully not branded by the sizzling VAG poker
in itself the brroklands is not "ugly" but at the same time in no way can it be summarized as the epitome of royal design, unless this idea was frozen in time somehwere between the death of john lennon and the first bush administration. the brooklands is more akin to BMW E39 5er than anything else, some will say how is that?
the answer is simple it is a clear evolutionary design of a succesful precursor designed to be "nice", "cool", but more importantly "unobtrusive" and "undivisive". i.e. almost everybody will coem to the conclusion that the brroklands is a beautiful car, almost eveyrbody will notice it and say something positive but have say a PT cruiser or a fiat multipla (Pre FL) pass alongside and those will generate more interest and more "buzz" not necessarily in a royally positive manner.
things is the brroklands is not particularly coherent when you look at it for a long time, the broken character line on the profile breaks with the syymetry and the parallelism of the window line in an obscene way, and the manner the whol front wraps around the headlights is reminescent of some of the very old cars that had those round signal blinkers position in this same way except that now we have a blank space. it is very very akin to say a 70's cadillac or lincoln coupe in general aura.
the rolls royce is itself not a particular beauty either itcan not lay claim to the titel of the most beautiful car in the worl like keira knightly can lay claim to the titelof most beautiful woman
it has some oddities including that high rear roofline, and that twinhood with the Drophead, but hey have you taken a look at the azure? thing is whereas the brroklands is the last breath of a dying concept (the bentely design language born in the RR 80's and surviving through the arnage) the coupe, after the DPC and the Phantom are advancing the RR design language into the 21st century, it is reformulating the basic RR idea into somethign viable for the coming 50 years, this started with the phantom is continued with both coupe's and will continue on with the smaler sedan and its derivatives
as a standalone the coupe gives a clear idea that it is a cabrio in essence, which is not something inherently bad, an RR is not a performance car (neither is a bentley though it is amrketed as such) thus making the coupe into a roofed cabrio is something very purposeful, it conveys a clear message that this is a car to waft along in much like a cabrio isn but with the added bonues of privacy, safety (for mobsters) and weather proofing
the design language emploed is also far cleaner than that of the brooklands, you do not have messy discontinous lines, you do not have odd parts grafted together like the brrokland's front, it is a continous hole, except for the "roof" which i have explained above.
in the end, the intended market for these 2 cars is very limited, say anywhere between 200 and 500 yearly as an absolute maximum, at this level you do not sell based on features, technology, switches, or gizmos (something the maybach developpers entirely missed) you are selling an image, a lifestyle, an experience, and a statement.
the badge accounts for half of these, and RR and Bentley ar almost equally powerful when ti comes to these concepts. this means in essence slap an RR or B badge on a micra and it WILL become a lot more than it actually is.
the other half of "an image, a lifestyle, an experience, and a statement" is design. (another thing the maybach designers entirely missed) at this level of automobile manufacturing you can afford to go wakko with your designs since you will always find between 200 and 500 people who will buy it, rather it is preferable to make it something "wakko" because people who are spending that much money on a car are people who want to be seen.
had this been a private and reserved person, he or she would have bought a merc Cl or a a 6er and called it a day. buyers of these cars whomever they are, rappers, mobsters, royalty, flithy rich, excentrics, nobility or whatever do not buy these cars to hide , they buy them to go on the road and tell "us" to get the hell out of the way, or ELSE.
to sum this last point up, at $300K+ a car, i want my car to make a statement, to occupy half the road and to assert me as overlord of the puny working class, powerfully yet subtly extending my hold over the common people's awe, and not letting me outside of their sight, and this my friends is exactly what an RR coupe does, and exactly where the brookland fails!
