2020 Rolls-Royce Dawn Road Test and Review

From a block away, there is no mistaking the 2020 Dawn for anything other than a Rolls-Royce. Its traditional yet outsized styling is matched by its sheer girth. The Rolls-Royce Dawn is a big car, stretching nearly 5 inches longer bumper to bumper than a full-size 2020 Cadillac Escalade SUV.

Of the five models in the 2020 Rolls-Royce lineup, the Dawn, which starts at $356,500, is the only one that comes with a retractable convertible top. Add onto that the $2,750 destination charge and $2,600 U.S. gas guzzler tax. Our tested Black Badge version, shown here, adds another $50,000. The Black Badge series is aimed at attracting younger and less-traditional buyers to the marque and includes 21-inch carbon-composite wheels, dark chrome grille surround and exterior trim, sport exhaust, uprated engine output, revised interior detailing, and more. The Dawn’s chief competitor is the Bentley Continental GT Convertible and it is manufactured in Goodwood, England.

As with the Rolls-Royce Wraith two-door coupe and millions of cars built before World War II, the Dawn’s wide doors are rear-hinged, meaning they open from the front. This provides ample space to swing one’s legs in and out easily. The only catch with this design is that the door pull is way out there if the door is opened fully. To remedy this, the Dawn has a pair of electric buttons atop the dash just inside the windshield pillars that enable the driver to close the doors electronically. Or, if one chooses instead to pull a door closed in the traditional manner, an electric motor will cinch them shut and latch them. Also, the doors will hold any position you put them in — handy because, like the rest of the car, they are substantial.

The power-adjustable front seats themselves are more akin to comfortable leather-covered chairs you might have in your living room, aided by standard heating, lumbar adjustment, memory, and available massage functions.

As you’d expect in a motorcar costing as much as a second home or good-size pleasure boat, the Dawn’s cabin is spectacular, fitted with buttery soft leather on the dash, console, and doors alongside various open-pore woods, aluminum, and carbon-fiber trim. Bespoke color pallets offer a huge potential for customization — such as our test vehicle’s striking black, Mandarin orange, and gray trim.

The list of standard amenities is long but includes such items as rain-sensing wipers, an elegant analog clock, dynamic cruise control with speed regulation, a leather-wrapped steering wheel with a power-adjustable column and an automatic tilt-away feature, four-zone automatic climate control, a universal garage-door opener, push-button start, and proximity key door unlocking. In addition to the usual cup holders, the Dawn also comes with a console-mounted cigarette lighter and ashtray.

Front and center in the Dawn is a 10.25-inch infotainment touchscreen display, which can be discretely hidden behind a veneered panel. Content is accessed using a BMW iDrive-like console controller wheel, the touchscreen itself, or voice control. Audio is provided via a BeSpoke 16-speaker, 600-watt AM/FM/CD/DVD/MP3 audio system with SiriusXM satellite radio and HD radio. For convenience, the radio has an analog volume knob and eight hard station pre-set buttons. Embedded navigation with a real-time traffic display is onboard as well. Android Auto cellphone mirroring is also available this year but not Apple CarPlay as of yet.

The Dawn is pre-wired for a 4G LTE onboard Wi-Fi hotspot and can also be fitted with optional rear-seat television.  Additionally, the Dawn has automatic volume control to compensate for ambient background noise — say, when the six-layer convertible top is down.

For $25,750 extra, buyers can add a hard tonneau that covers the rear seats. It’s fashioned from aluminum and carbon-fiber material and, as with most surfaces in the Dawn, it’s leather-covered. Like with a few special late-1950s to early 1960s Ford Thunderbirds, optional aero cowling transforms the Dawn from a four-seater to one with two very selfish seats, accented by a pair of streamlined and stylish fairings. A pair of storage bins atop the cowling add a whiff of functionality.

The aero cowling is secured to the car body via a pair of latches to the rear of the front seatbacks and pins that key the cover into the slots for the rear-seat headrests. While it’s not heavy, removing the aero cowling is a two-person operation to safely lift and carry the cumbersome assembly to the rear and clear of the vehicle without risking damage to expensive coachwork. After lifting off the aero cowling, it’s necessary to slide the rear-seat headrests into position if anyone is going to sit back there.

As the front seatbelts are incorporated into the front seats, there is no webbing to duck under to access the rear seat. A power easy-entry feature and large door openings facilitate easy rear-seat ingress and egress. The heated, adult-size individual bucket rear seats offer plenty of cushy comfort and spread-out room for two. The rear center console has its own individual automatic climate controls, cigarette lighter, ashtrays, and cup holders.

Trunk space is on the small side for such a large vehicle, due mainly to the fully automatic convertible top that stores in the space between the rear seat and trunk. Luggage volume is a compact-car-like 10.4 cubic feet with the top up, and it shrinks to 9.2 cu ft when the top is down. The space will easily accommodate a pair of airline roller bags plus some laptop briefcases and various soft carry-ons.

Who else but the Brits would devise handy, out-of-sight storage for a pair of umbrellas for when the weather degrades precipitously? No worries.

In the 2020 Rolls-Royce Dawn, both the driver and front passenger have their very own custom-fitted umbrellas stored neatly in the front fenders. Push a button inside either front door frame and a built-in spring-loaded mechanism releases an umbrella. The holders even have drains so the umbrellas can dry out between showers. Note, however, that not just any umbrellas will fit in the holders.

The acutely British umbrella holders aren’t the Dawn’s only dash of whimsy. Perched enthusiastically atop the convertible’s stately Pantheon grille is the brand’s storied hood ornament. A windswept female figure dubbed the Spirit of Ecstasy has been around since 1911 and fitted to all Rolls-Royce cars since the early 1920s. On the Dawn, it’s available in polished chrome, black chrome, or carbon-fiber.

To discourage theft or vandalism and to make sure the figure doesn’t become a projectile in a collision, the Spirit of Ecstasy is spring-loaded and will retract instantly into the grille if pushed in any direction. There is also a button inside the car that facilitates raising or lowering the figurine electro-mechanically.  

A BMW-based 6.6-liter V12 powers the Dawn. The twin-turbocharged, 48-valve, direct-injected, all-aluminum 12-cylinder is rated at 563 horsepower and 605 lb-ft of torque in the regular-issue Dawn convertible and upgraded to 593 hp and 620 lb-ft for the Black Badge version. Both are teamed with a silky-shifting ZF eight-speed automatic transmission with satellite-enhanced shift algorithms that tailor gearbox operation based on whether the Dawn is cornering or going uphill or downhill.

The big, twin-turbo engine is capable of scooting the near-three-ton Dawn from rest to 60 mph in less than five seconds. EPA fuel economy estimates are 12 mpg city/18 mpg highway/14 mpg combined. For the U.S., add a one-time gas guzzler tax of $2,600. I averaged an indicated 15.4 mpg over 140 miles of mixed residential and highway driving. A large 21.7-gallon fuel tank helps salvage a reasonable 300-plus-mile cruising range between fillups. A drive selector stalk to the right of the steering wheel enables the driver to tailor throttle response, shift timing, and suspension damping to the situation at hand. There is even a setting on Black Badge models that makes its sport exhaust sound more authoritative.

Watch the Rolls-Royce Dawn motor past and at first it appears that the wheels are not turning. Well, the wheels are, but their hubs are fixed to the spindles in such a way that the self-righting centers always display the “RR” Rolls-Royce wheel emblems right-side up.

The Dawn is a large, heavy, rear-wheel drive car best suited for effortless cruising. In town, it’s a bit large with its 41.7-foot turning diameter, and shorter drivers will want to raise the seat to help see over the tall hood and rear deck. The convertible’s rigid body is largely free of cowl shake over uneven sections of pavement or diagonal surfaces such as speed bumps, railroad tracks, and driveway ramps. Self-leveling air springs and adaptive damping shocks take most of the sting out of rough pavement, and the car corners without noticeable body lean. The Dawn’s rack-and-pinion steering has light effort and is reasonably precise, though it could use more definitive on-center feel on the highway. The four-wheel disc brakes offer good response and powerful stopping ability from speed. The Black Badge version gets 1-inch-larger brake rotors as well as larger 21-inch run-flat tires commensurate with that model’s enhanced engine output.

Despite a rather extensive selection of standard and optional equipment, the 2020 Dawn has a short roster of driver-assistance features compared to many other offerings in the luxury segment. Standard are rear, side, and overhead-view cameras and sonar-based parking sensors, handy technology to have when the far reaches of the Dawn are not always easy to monitor. And available are adaptive cruise control, a lane-departure warning, automatic high beams, a head-up display for speed limit road signs and navigation directions, and infrared night vision.

What the 2020 Rolls-Royce Dawn presents, however, is a unique driving experience uncommon in this time of tall-riding SUVs and highly efficient sedans. Okay, so it’s not quite like driving a rolling museum enshrining the brand’s gloried past, but the open-top car’s tall hood, Pantheon grille, and broad shoulders give it immense road presence. Spending more than a few minutes in the Dawn’s exquisitely crafted interior will spoil you for other luxury cars. There’s really nothing else quite like it. And we mean that literally — the Rolls-Royce Bespoke personalization program means it’s unlikely you’ll see two exactly alike.