This $570K Electric Rolls-Royce Corniche Rewrites What Luxury Feels Like

Reach around the steering wheel and pull the old-school column-mounted shifter down until the needle points to D. Ease off the brake and squeeze the accelerator. The Halcyon Rolls-Royce Corniche Drophead Coupe (fancy English coachbuilder talk for convertible) oozes smoothly and silently away from a standstill, tires crunching on the gravel driveway the only audible clue that we’re underway. Henry Royce, the perfectionist engineer whose passion for smoothness and silence created the core values upon which the 122-year-old Rolls-Royce brand still trades, would be impressed.

Royce, who died in 1933, never built an electric car. But he was, ironically, a talented, self-taught electrical engineer who owned a company that made, among other things, electric motors before he met the wealthy and aristocratic entrepreneur Charles Rolls in 1904 to found Rolls-Royce. Even more ironically, after driving an electric vehicle made by the Columbia Automobile Company of Hartford, Connecticut, in April 1900, it was Rolls who saw the future potential of EVs. “The electric car is perfectly noiseless and clean,” he declared, 123 years before Rolls-Royce would deliver its first electric-powered car, the Spectre. “There is no smell or vibration. They should become very useful when fixed charging stations can be arranged.”

Charles Rolls would also have been impressed by the Halcyon Corniche convertible, though for different reasons. Rolls was a thrill seeker—he would become only the 11th person in the world to die in an aircraft crash when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off during a flying display in 1910—and he would have loved the fact this beautifully crafted rework of a Rolls-Royce designed in the 1960s has about twice the horsepower of the original, which sauntered to 60 mph in about 10 seconds.

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A $570K Bespoke Revival: Only 60 Cars

Halcyon, a subsidiary of Evice Technologies, a tier one electric powertrain developer based in Guildford, England, plans to build 60 electric-powered Rolls-Royces based on the Corniche two-doors and Silver Shadow sedans originally launched in 1965. Halcyon co-founder and CEO Matthew Pearson said 25 cars will be Corniche Drophead Coupes like our test car. Of the others, 20 will be Corniche Fixed Head Coupes, and 15 will be Silver Shadow sedans. (Halcyon will do Bentley variants if customers wish; Rolls-Royce owned Bentley at the time, and the Bentley models were identical apart from the grille.) Each car will be entirely bespoke in terms of paint and interior trim, and each build will take about a year to complete.

Price? If you have to ask, you can’t afford one. For the record, though, the Halcyon Rolls-Royces start at about $570,000, plus the cost of a donor car, shipping, and local taxes. Nope, they’re not cheap, but for the money you get a 1960s Rolls-Royce that’s better built and better equipped than the original.

For example, Halcyon’s craftsmen will spend more than 2,000 hours of the 5,000-hour build program just on refurbishing the bodywork and subtle design changes that include completely redesigned rear bumpers that retain the same overall look as the originals but don’t extend as far along the side of the rear quarter panel. The interior is all new, artfully combining forms that you’d expect in a car designed in the 1960s with modern materials and technologies, including an infotainment screen under the center of the dash that supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto to power a high-end audio system.

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Modern EV Muscle, Classic Rolls Balance

Halcyon’s powertrain consists of a motor mounted at the rear axle and battery packs located at the front and rear of the car, with an 800-volt electrical architecture that supports fast-charging rates of up to 230 kW. The standard setup comprises a 400-hp motor and 77-kWh battery pack that Halcyon says delivers a range of roughly 230 miles. A 500-hp version of the motor, combined with a 94-kWh battery pack that boosts the range to around 300 miles, is available as a $55,000 option. Pearson said that the powertrain, controlled by software developed in-house by Evice, weighs the same as the original Rolls-Royce internal combustion engine and transmission, plus associated prop shaft, rear axle, gas tank, and cooling system hardware. The weight distribution has been slightly improved, however, going from the 54/46 percent front to rear of the original car to 51/49 percent.

It might have a modern powertrain, but the Halcyon Corniche Drophead Coupe still feels vintage to drive. The modern semi-active shocks do a better job of supporting the car through corners and under acceleration and braking but, importantly, also allow relatively soft spring rates to be retained to ensure the good rolling ride comfort these cars were famed for. That’s helped by the generous sidewalls of the 235/70 Avon Turbosteel tires on the stock 15-inch steel rims, which effortlessly soak up minor imperfections in the road.

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The steering feel is light but relatively communicative, and while the steering wheel—much smaller than the black plastic original—is not adjustable and set at a slightly odd angle, the relatively high and upright seating position and slab-sided exterior, combined with what is by modern car standards a relatively narrow track, make the Halcyon Corniche easy to place on the road. The brake pedal feel is a massive improvement over that of the original cars (which used an engine-driven pressurized system that also pressurized the rear shocks) thanks to the adoption of a conventional hydraulic brake setup that delivers a firmer and more consistent pedal.

Drivers can choose from three powertrain drive modes (Drive, Spirited, and Touring), each of which also tweaks the damping rates of the adaptive suspension, along with the level of lift-off regenerative braking and shape of the motor’s torque curve under acceleration. Each mode is accessed by moving the column shifter to align with the D, S, or T markings on the 1960-style analog display atop the steering column. We couldn’t experience the different regen levels, as our test car—the second prototype built and fitted with the standard 400-hp motor and 77-kWh battery—had yet to receive the relevant software upgrades. But Spirited mode did deliver additional accelerative urgency and a slightly stiffer ride compared with the regular Drive mode, while Tour mode felt plush and relaxed.

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You can feel some shimmying back through the steering wheel as the various bushings designed in the 1960s by Rolls-Royce engineers to improve isolation from road noise and impact harshness work through their compliances. The bushings are new versions of the rubber originals, not modern, stiffer polyurethane items. “We didn’t want to take away any of the primary passive comforts of the car,” Pearson said. For customer Drophead models, Halcyon has engineered an underfloor brace that connects the front and rear subframe mounting points to increase the torsional and bending stiffness to the chassis. The slight rearwards shift in weight distribution accounts for the fact we felt the rear axle of the Halcyon Corniche occasionally kiss the bump stops over some of the heaves and humps on the Surrey back roads of our drive route. (Pearson said customer cars will be fitted with slightly stiffer rear springs.)

Back in the ’60s, the Rolls-Royce Corniche Drophead Coupe was, outside the U.S. and away from Caddys and Lincolns of the era, considered a big convertible. But it feels surprisingly compact when you sit inside it. And although the Halcyon Corniche boasts modern features, including cruise control, a reversing camera, climate control air conditioning, and electrically adjustable heated and cooled front seats, the fundamental ergonomics are of course vintage, which means you have to spend some time sitting in the car to understand where the various buttons and switches are and what they do.

Why This Rolls Might Be the One You Actually Want

Yes, you could buy a brand-new Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII for the same money; that car is even smoother, quieter, and more powerful, and it’s equipped with all the best 21st century accoutrements of comfort. But the Halcyon Corniche Drophead Coupe would probably turn more heads cruising the sunny boulevards of South Beach or Beverly Hills, especially since production of the Dawn ended in 2023 and Rolls-Royce no longer has a convertible in its regular production model lineup. The Halcyon Drophead Coupe is a classic Rolls-Royce you can drive every day, but more important, it’s a car whose unique character has been enhanced as opposed to modified. Charles Rolls and Henry Royce would have approved.

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But What If You Still Love Combustion Engines?

Halcyon originally envisaged building only electric-powered versions of its superbly remastered Rolls-Royce Corniches and Silver Shadow and their Bentley derivatives. But potential customers attracted by the quality of the workmanship and the deftly integrated modern technology of the Halcyon concept wondered whether they could have one with an internal combustion engine under the hood. Halcyon listened.

The Halcyon Great Eight Series will follow the same formula as the company’s electric-powered lineup, now branded as the Genesis Series. But instead of the 21st century Evice Technologies electric powertrain under that classic sheetmetal, the Great Eight cars will have a modified and modernized version of the iconic Rolls-Royce 6.75-liter V-8, an engine originally designed in the 1950s and kept in production for more than 60 years.

“People kept asking us for it,” Pearson said of the decision to build 60 ICE-powered cars—30 Corniche convertibles, 20 Corniche coupes, and 10 Silver Shadow sedans. “They had absolutely fallen in love with the design, the brake changes we’ve made, the suspension changes we’ve made, and the opportunity for the client journey to be so bespoke and engaging. We’ve always wanted to build world-class cars, and with the Rolls-Royce engines still providing a great opportunity to do that, we thought it was something we should look at.”

The Rolls-Royce engine will be modified to improve its power and torque outputs—though final numbers have yet to be decided—and will drive through a four-speed automatic transmission rather the three-speed GM Turbo Hydramatic 400 originally fitted to the Corniche and Silver Shadow in the ’60s and ’70s.