• It’s going to be a very expensive exercise…
• …but you probably won’t mind too much
• We think it’ll be a reliable machine, though

The Rolls-Royce Dawn, and any other model in the firm’s range, will be spectacularly expensive to run. Fuel economy is a claimed 19.8mpg for the standard car and 19.2mpg for the Black Badge edition, but at least you get a generous 82-litre fuel tank. That means at least you’ll be able to travel a decent distance between fill-ups.

Insurance, tax, servicing and maintenance won’t be cheap either, but then compared with the cost of the car this will be a drop in the ocean.

Finally, you can expect a big hit in depreciation in the first three years and 60,000 miles. You’ll lose 49% of the standard model’s value, and 48% of the Black Badge’s over this period.

The Dawn doesn’t do well here. A big V12, a soft-top convertible roof, that massive, flat nose and a flagrant disregard of any CO2-lowering tech means the official emissions range between 326 and 337g/km. That’s a lot of carbon dioxide output.

• Very high quality craftsmanship
• Feels solid and well appointed
• Even shared BMW bits should fare well

Build quality is right at the core of Rolls-Royce’s brand, and so you’d be forgiven for expecting nothing but the utmost reliability from your Dawn.

Over the course of its time on sale there’s been a single recall, for a potential side airbag deployment failure, but this should have been rectified for free by the company so shouldn’t be an ongoing issue.

The cabin of the Dawn feels extremely robustly built and of exceptional quality, and the parts the car shares with BMW relatives are all extensively tried and tested.