Ron drove the Spectre for maybe four minutes before he stopped talking entirely — not because he’d conceded anything, but because there was nothing to say over an engine note that wasn’t there.
Monaco empty, before it wakes up
Most of what gets written about Monaco happens during the hours when the principality is at its most crowded and loudest. This test needed the opposite: streets empty at dawn, before the marina traffic and the first tour buses, continuing along the coast toward Menton — the “Pearl of France,” close enough to the Italian border that the drive itself becomes a genuine change of scenery by the end. A test about silence needs a genuinely quiet road and a genuinely quiet hour to actually prove anything.
Three drivers, three different relationships with luxury silence. Juliana takes the Bentley Continental GT, arguing that a W12 done exceptionally well is its own kind of quiet. Ron claims the Rolls-Royce Ghost Long — the traditional, combustion-engined Rolls-Royce, engineered obsessively for cabin isolation. The Rolls-Royce Spectre goes to whoever’s narrating: the fleet’s first fully electric Rolls-Royce, and the only one of the three with no engine at all.
The numbers, for anyone who wants them before the story
| Rolls-Royce Spectre | Rolls Royce Ghost Long | Bentley Continental GT | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seats | 4 | 5 | 4 |
| Powertrain | Dual electric motors | 6.75L twin-turbo V12 | 6.0L twin-turbo W12 |
| Horsepower | 584 hp | 563 hp | 626 hp |
| 0–100 km/h | 4.5 sec | 4.8 sec | 3.7 sec |
| Top speed | 250 km/h | 250 km/h | 333 km/h |
| Rental (per day) | ~€2,400 | ~€2,400 | ~€1,700 |
| Drivetrain | AWD | AWD | AWD |
Every figure here is straight from this fleet’s own listing — no hedging required. The interesting number isn’t in the table at all: it’s the 900 Nm of torque the Spectre delivers instantly, with nothing to rev and nothing to wait for.
First stint: through empty Monaco, where the Ghost made its case
Ron’s Ghost Long went first, through the emptied-out streets around the harbor while the city was still mostly asleep. The case he built was genuine: Rolls-Royce’s combustion cars are engineered with a kind of obsessive attention to cabin isolation that most manufacturers don’t even attempt — acoustic glass, absorptive materials packed into every cavity, an engine tuned as much for what it sounds like from inside the cabin as for what it produces. “This isn’t a loud car pretending to be quiet,” Ron said. “This is decades of specifically solving for silence, the hard way.”
Juliana’s Continental GT came through next, along the coast road toward Menton, and made a different case entirely: a W12 driven smoothly at a cruising pace is its own kind of quiet, and unlike either Rolls-Royce, this car can also stop being quiet the moment a driver wants it to. “The Ghost and the Spectre are both built to disappear,” she said. “This one can disappear or show up, depending on what you actually want that moment.”
Second stint: the coast to Menton, and the argument that closed it
The Spectre came through last, into Menton as the town properly woke up, and the case it made wasn’t about being quieter than the Ghost Long by degree — it was different in kind. No engine note to isolate against, because there’s no engine. No exhaust note to insulate away, because there’s no exhaust. Just 900 Nm arriving the instant a foot moves, and a cabin that isn’t fighting anything to stay silent because there’s nothing generating noise to fight in the first place. “The Ghost is the best version of hiding an engine,” the narrator said. “The Spectre doesn’t have one to hide.”
A bit of context on each car
The Rolls-Royce Spectre is the marque’s first series-production all-electric model — a genuinely different engineering approach, not simply an EV version of an existing combustion car.
The Rolls Royce Ghost Long is the stretched-wheelbase version of the standard Ghost, with an extra 170 mm of rear legroom and fully reclining rear seats available — built as much for the rear cabin as the driver’s seat.
The Bentley Continental GT remains covered in more depth in the Ferrari-in-Monaco road test, where its long-distance comfort case was already made against a very different set of rivals.
Practical considerations
All three cars are confirmed available in Monaco and the French Riviera. The Spectre’s real-world range is worth confirming directly for anyone planning a longer day beyond Monaco and the immediate coast, since it’s the one genuine practical trade-off against the two combustion cars.
Our call: the Rolls-Royce Spectre. Not because it’s quieter by a small margin — because it’s quiet in a completely different way, with instant electric response neither combustion rival can fully match. Choose the Rolls Royce Ghost Long if a traditional combustion Rolls-Royce, engineered obsessively for isolation, matters more than going electric; choose the Bentley Continental GT if you want the option to stop being quiet whenever you feel like it.
All three are standalone rentals out of Monaco and the French Riviera. Get in touch and we’ll set one up.