– Los Angeles, California

There are few feelings grander than showing up at the airport with a brand new Rolls-Royce Ghost waiting in your name. I was lucky to have just that experience, while traveling to California over the New Year’s weekend, to attend a posh wedding in Malibu.

In addition to enjoying attention from strangers and impressing my friends, the coastal California enclave was a fine place to see how Rolls drivers actually live. There are few places where a Ghost isn’t a rare sighting, but here I saw two other Rolls-Royce over a few days, just at the gas station nearest my hotel.

And though the Ghost looked the part at the front of every hotel and was given special dispensation at restaurants, it nevertheless has some inherent flaws where our new scoring system is concerned. Price, as you’ll no doubt guess, limits the verdict score simply because of its more-than-my-house bottom line.