In 2025 if I described to you a car equipped with four-wheel automatically-adjustable dampers, two calipers on the front brake disc, and a massive V8, your brain would probably conjure a supercar, right? Probably something mid-engined, maybe built in Italy? Whatever it is, a lap of the Nürburgring would surely be a violently impressive journey, and a solid driver could run a reasonably impressive lap time, of course. Well, what if I told you I was describing a Rolls Royce from the early 1990s with around 220 horsepower and a General Motors-sourced slushbox automatic transmission? Okay, that’s going to be a seriously slow lap. But not with Misha Charoudin at the wheel! From the word go, this guy is flinging the car around and urging it to go quicker than it probably ever has been driven.
Okay, so the Rolls isn’t exactly keeping up with standard Porsche Caymans or BMW M3s, but Misha manages to hang with some eurotrash hatchbacks for a while, even managing to pass a few, in a car that has absolutely no business on a race track. There’s just something so special about peering out over the long hood of the old-money luxury sedan and seeing the Spirit of Ecstasy hood emblem carving its way through the Karussel. You absolutely need to see this video, because it’s raucous misuse of machinery, and that’s perhaps the best thing to do with a car.
The Silver Spirit II
The second-generation Rolls Royce Silver Spirit has the long-lived L-series six-and-three-quarters-liters V8 under the hood, for the first time with Bosch fuel injection, making around 220 horsepower and just shy of 300 torques. With a dry weight of a tick over 5,000 pounds, that V8 was only good enough for an alleged 10-second 0-60 time, and could only push the car to a top speed of 125. Yeah, it’s not going to be setting any records at the Green Hell, but who cares when you’re having this much fun?
Click that play button, you won’t regret it.
