Downtown Abbey

Trying to drive a car that dwarfs most stately homes through the heart of the capital is a fool's errand. All part of the service for our man in the chauffeur's cap

- OLLIE KEW

Everyone’s looking. Million pound cars nearing Harrods on the Brompton Road invite an audience. But up front, splay legged under the hula hoop steering wheel, I’m invisible. That’s the thing about chauffeuring. Everyone’s looking - but not at the driver.

I could have royalty aboard. Hollywood A listers or Grammy winners practising speeches. Heads of state or absolute states. But I’m a model of discretion. You wouldn't believe who I had in the back of my Rolls-Royce last week. And anyway, I'll never tell. But I will tell you about the car. Magnificent, isn’t it? My office is a 1961 Rolls-Royce Phantom V wearing James Young coachwork. Mr Young made it long enough to rack up yellow box fines in three junctions at once and fitted a half scale Parthenon at one end. On tyres more thickly cushioned than a super king mattress it wafts imperiously over the potholes of Mayfair without clinking the crystal whisky glasses in the sideboard.

Somewhere back in Kensington is the cavernous boot, offering space for my client’s weekly rations of peach and peacock, Royal Ascot hat boxes... and a charging cable for its 80kWh battery. This Roller appears to be almost 65 years old but its powertrain is from right here in the present.

Today we shall discover if the electric age makes life easier for the traditional chauffeur. All that torque, such effortless smoothness and silence. Rolls-Royce has fervently argued e-motors are the ultimate in luxury propulsion as it has whispered into the EV era with its spectacular Spectre, but even before the £300k coupe arrived, there was a way to drive a ghostly quiet e-Roller. It’s the sourdough bread and butter of Silverstone’s restoration and electrification specialist Lunaz.