Rolls-Royce Dawn

Press the throttle to the floor in the Dawn and the violence you'd expect simply never arrives. Instead there's a settling, a gathering hush as the 6.6-litre V12 draws in a long breath before delivering its 563 bhp not as a shove but as a rising tide beneath you. The eight-speed automatic shifts so quietly you sense it more than hear it, each gear arriving like a thought already completed.

This is what Rolls-Royce means when they speak of 'waftability'—a word that sounds invented until you feel the Dawn gather speed with the top down and the world simply falling away behind you, unhurried, entirely composed. The cabin remains a private room even in open air, wind managed and voices unraised, the sort of aristocratic calm that no amount of horsepower is meant to disturb. There is no drama in the way this car moves, only inevitability—the sense that wherever you're headed, you'll arrive having exerted no effort at all.

Four occupants ride in the kind of hush usually reserved for closed cabins, the fabric roof lowering in twenty seconds without ceremony, as though the car simply decided the sky should be part of the interior. The Dawn doesn't ask to be driven quickly. It asks only to be allowed to glide, gathered and serene, for as long as the road allows.