Wealth envy and the Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupé

Neal Boortz linked to this review of the new Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupé to illustrate "wealth envy":

[A] government think tank has looked carefully at the question of second homes and has announced that the rich bastards who have them should be forced to rent them out to underachieving, fat people.

[...]

Just the other day, I read a report that said musicals in London’s West End are bucking the trend with higher than ever audiences. This, you might think if you were a normal, well balanced soul, is a good thing. But sadly the red top reporter was not. He was just bothered that bigger audiences meant Andrew Lloyd Webber would have even more money. And that made him incandescent with fury.

Why? It’s not like Andrew Lloyd Webber spends his evenings being carried around council estates in Slough in a sedan chair, waving his jewels out of the window. He just gets on with his life in a way that has no effect whatsoever on the way you live yours or I live mine.

It’s like being kept awake at night with a burning sense of envy about Cliff Richard’s youthful good looks. What should we do? Take a Black & Decker sander to his cheekbones? Why? Because disfiguring Cliff’s face won’t make any difference to your own.

I don’t yearn for many aspects of the American way but they do seem to have this dreadful bitterness under control. When they see a man pass by in a limousine, they say: “One day, I’ll have one of those.” When we see a man pass by in a limo, we say: “One day, I’ll have him out of that.”

All this past week, I’ve been driving around in a Rolls-Royce coupé and it’s been a genuinely alarming insight into the bitterness of Britain’s obese and stupid underclass. Because when you drive this enormous monster past a bus queue, you realise that hate is not an emotion. It’s something you can touch, and see and smell.

Just yesterday, a man in a beaten-up van deliberately straddled two lanes to make sure I could not get past. It would have made no difference at all to his life if I’d done so, but there was no way in hell he was going to let a Roller by. I find that shoulder-saggingly depressing.

But the car isn't perfect:

Worst of all, though, are the seats. They are too hard, there is no side support at all and after one four-hour drive, I had backache. “Good,” you might be thinking, if you are in a government think tank. “That means the rich bastard won’t mind when we force him to rent his stupid car to a fat woman in the north.”

Ah, but you see, in a Rolls all of these faults are lost in a sea of unparalleled joy.

Providing you leave that sport button alone, it will sashay down a motorway in such a way that there’s no need to worry about whether it is better to arrive or to travel hopefully. It doesn’t feel like you’re doing either. It’s like you’re in a big kapok ball.

Mind you, it is still pretty fast. Its performance figures are nearly as good as those of a Maserati GT. And it would be faster still if the slushmatic box didn’t take a full second to make sure each gearchange is as smooth as possible.

[...]

The only proper drawback is the loathing from other road users. But you know what. That’s their problem, because style and comfort are not deadly sins. Envy, on the other hand . . .

THE CLARKSOMETER

Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupé

ENGINE 6749cc, V12

POWER 453bhp @ 5350rpm

TORQUE 531 lb ft @ 3500rpm

TRANSMISSION Six-speed auto

FUEL 18mpg (combined cycle)

CO 2377g/km

ACCELERATION 0-60mph: 5.6sec

TOP SPEED 155mph

PRICE £296,500

18mpg? Not bad. That's about what my old Ford F150 truck gets and it's got the same problem as the Rolls: the seats are too hard. But I can't complain. The truck only cost $32,000 5 years ago while the Rolls at £296,500 costs $564,640. That's more than my whole farm cost me and the Rolls doesn't even have a barn or a chicken-coop.