Driving My 2003 Toyota Echo Wouldn't Feel the Same

In today's Slate, Seth Stevenson, who's a writer I admire (as far as I can admire writers), wrote an article on the power of the Rolls-Royce brand and as part of his research was actually able to test-drive a Ghost that cost $352,000 or, using the metric I prefer, $92,000 more than I paid for my house.

The main reason that a Rolls — am I allowed to be that informal? — costs so much is because of the craftsmanship. Seth — am I allowed to be that informal? — notes that the average car requires 25 to 30 hours to build, whereas the Rolls takes up to 450 hours, and 90 percent of the work is performed by humans (as opposed to the 90 percent performed by robots on your hunk o' junk).

But before you assume that $300,000 of that Ghost sticker price went into labor costs, what with unions and all that, Stevenson describes the construction of the part of the Phantom (the Rolls for folks who think the Ghost is too pedestrian) into which you plant your ass, and you might think you're reading an article in The Onion:

Consider the leather shop, which turns the hides of 11 bulls into the interior of a Phantom. The natural grain hides are chosen with absurd care — not from farms in South America, where the bulls' skin might be blemished by energetic roaming and run-ins with barbed-wire fences, but from European farms where they enjoy lives of sloth and ease. Only male animals are used because females' milk production can cause unsightly belly stretch marks.

Rolls is entering its second decade as part of the BMW Group, which also includes brands like Mini and Husqvarna (the "qv" in the name always makes me a little uncomfortable for some reason) and is enjoying its greatest year ever, thanks to the combination of "German engineering and British craftmanship" — and a lot of worldwide drooling.