I received an invitation to a RR Gala at the Elysian Hotel in Chicago June 2nd.

The event will include a drive experience and a reception.

This hotel is supposed to be superb.

Any one else get an invitation?

 

The event was this evening.

The Elysian is a perfect spot for this kind of thing, new, classy and very comfortable.
This is the hotel with the Lexus's available for customers and they also had a 600 in the courtyard.

In the courtyard they had 5 Rollers, a Phantom, 2 Ghosts and 2 Drophead verts.

The Ghost is a nice modern design but the detailing is nothing next to the Phantom line. The sticker on the Phantom was more than $450K though.
Here is a pic of one of the Dropheads. The car is money.

They had a table set up outside for signing the waivers if your were going to drive.

Inside the hotel they had a ball room set up with wine and overly fancy finger food and a jazz combo.

The gala part was a subset of the spirit of ecstasy photos done for the RR centennial.

I hung out outside to watch the crowd. Mostly well healed 40 to 60 types. Only one guy in leather pants with shoes to match. Also some 30s type down town business crowd, about 150 guests in total.

I drove a Ghost. Blah, blah squishy steering and a nice ride and good power. It got boring fast. More interesting was the chatter from the sales guy from Perillo (lived in Munich, speaks 4 languages, mom is Turkish.......). Didn't seem to know the car all that well and was more about what colors would be good. He was honest enough to say that the Bentleys have better materials (no cheapo plastichrome). I ended up driving 2 other folks who didn't want to drive one (nice folks though). When he talked about his biz, he mentioned that of the couple of hundred customers he has, only 10% were local. Much of the biz at the Gold Coast shop is tourists and internet customers. He added that folks don't want to come into the dealership and prefer to do the transaction stuff from the comfort of their own homes.He was saying that if you send folks cars that don't live up to what was represented, the reputation goes down fast.

The reception was too loud and since I don't drink I bagged that. There was very little RR corporate pitching and to my surprise, zero corporate photography.

Perillo was there himself in blue suede shoes and a shirt that had the collar sticking out perpendicular (unintended I am sure).

I would love to know how I ended up on the invite list since I would be the last guy to go for a barge like that, but it was fun for an hour.

 

sounds like a wonderful evening. Most people will never even see the inside of one of these beautiful cars let alone to drive one. Pretty cool!

 

I have to say, as much as I think the Ghost is cool--the fact that it's not a bespoke Rolls Royce kind of irks me.