Adam Hay-Nicholls is a journalist and author specialising in motoring, luxury, and travel. He contributes to titles including Boisdale Life, The Times and Country Life, and is known for his witty, first-hand takes on high-end cars and culture.

This year, Rolls-Royce has toasted 100 years of its Phantom limousine. It’s a car that still makes people stand to attention. It is, and has always been, an Everest of metalwork – a monument to the idea that refinement is simply vulgarity with better manners. It’s a rolling reliquary of British self-regard and it’s maintained its reputation through a century of constant, often profound change.

The Phantom V presented on these pages is the most iconic of eight generations. This is the car you buy when you’ve run out of space to store your art collection and have taken to hoarding duchesses. It came to market in 1959, and over 13 years 832 were built. They were delivered to royals, rockers and rogues. Famously. John Lennon had his tarted up to look like a gypsy caravan, which made the Queen weep into her gin. They were all bespoke, but the Phantom seen here is the most unusual of all. Like The Beatles’ back catalogue, it’s been remastered.

While Rolls-Royce are busy making Phantom VIIIs, a start-up called Lunaz, based in Silverstone, has turned its attention to the Spirit of Ecstasy’s vintage hits. They’ll exhume an old Rolls, strip the whole thing down to the paint, and re-build it with discrete modern technology and the latest in leather and marquetry, so what you’re left with is a 1960s motor that’s basically brand new bar the chassis plate. All the nostalgia, none of the leaks.

Most novel is the powertrain. At this point purists may start to bleed from the teeth, but as well as restoring the car and putting in things like electric dampers, modern electric windows and windscreen wipers, USB ports and a discrete sat nav and reversing camera (which you will need), under the bonnet is a vast, humming sarcophagus of lithium.

Are you telling me this sucker is electrical? Yes, m’lady. In place of the original 6.23-litre V8 is a proprietary powertrain which produces just shy of 400bhp (the original only mustered 220bhp). Weight has only increased by 90kg, as it was so sumo-sized to begin with - a whalish 2.7 tonnes.

The price: More than a million quid. Who’s in the market for this emission-free leviathan that’s 30-times the cost of a Tesla and took 5,500 hours to build? Very wealthy people, obviously, who appreciate classic lines and state-of-the-art tech, who perhaps have been put off classic car ownership before because they don’t want to breakdown, belch fumes or cover their alabaster gravel driveways in engine oil. And given a Rolls-Royce should be smooth, silent and bullet-proof, it makes more sense than any other EV out there. Another party that’s taken an interest are extremely high-end hotels who love to have a statement piece parked out front, something truly memorable to whisk guests from the airport, and they like that this emphasises their green credentials.

Lunaz are in talks with a number of properties, including the Maybourne group, which manages The Berkeley, The Connaught, The Emory and Claridge’s in London. This is where epic blag of the day No.1 comes in: I’ve acquired an impressive suite at The Berkeley overlooking Hyde Park, champagne in the ice bucket for after my spin. Epic blag of the day No.2 is parked in front, resplendent in navy blue, with pale hide and enough walnut to reforest Surrey. A Phantom fit for the two kings – Charles III and Elvis. The owner of this 1961 piece of automotive sculpture is Adar Poonawalla, an Indian biotech billionaire who collects Rolls-Royces the way other people collect air miles, who also happens to be an investor in Lunaz (something he has in common with Sir David Beckham).

Lunaz’s founder, David Lorenz, took me through the controls before leaving me to my own devices. At which point I put Led Zeppelin on full blast and wafted my way around Belgravia and Knightsbridge. It was Halloween, and the streets were thick with witches, vampires and skeletons. The Phantom is spectral not only in name. Even without an exhaust pipe, it seems to create its own fog. Scarier still is its titanic length, which means you have to be very careful around SW1’s tighter corners, not helped by wing mirrors that reveal almost nothing The turning circle, David told me, has been much improved, but I’d still measure it in postcodes. The steering is light at speed, but the crawling pace of Sadiq Khan’s traffic means you really have to put your back into it. Manoeuvring it in rush hour was like trying to fold the Natural History Museum. Yet it glides with ethereal beauty, and draws open-mouthed stares not of envy but respect. Pedestrians stop and bow slightly without realising they’re doing it. You could drive it over a fainted guardsman and not feel a bump. Rolls-Royce always talk about the champagne test: Can you floor it without spilling your passengers’ drinks? The torque delivery here is even smoother than Sir Henry Royce managed.

A Phantom is really all about rear passengers, so I went and picked some up. I swung by the Fox & Hounds on Passmore Street, my local, and loaded four regular punters and the landlady in the back (there are two additional flip-down seats either side of the custom whisky bar) while the barmaid gamely shared the bench seat upfront and played co-pilot. The pub was left unsupervised as we cruised the length of the King’s Road, which I’m sure did marvellous things for the profits.

I went back to The Berkeley for phase two of my mission. The test driving of fancy cars was something I often parlayed into my romantic life back in the day, or at least the hope of a romantic life. Then I came to learn that it’s stressful enough driving a six or seven-figure car with which one is unfamiliar without the extra dollop of nervousness that comes with trying to charm your way into someone’s knickers at the same time.

Therefore, for my next test I employed a chauffeur who would dispatch my date and I to and from the Royal Albert Hall to see the Irish rock band Inhaler. Apt, I felt, given the Phantom V is the most rock n’ roll car of all time. The pulchritudinous date in question was far out of my league you won’t be surprised to hear, much like the car, but if The Berkeley and a Phantom weren’t going to do the trick, nothing was. For a few glorious hours the world seemed to belong entirely to us – or at least to Adar Poonawalla’s insurance company.

It has at least earned me the promise of a second date, though I’m not sure a basement flat and an Uber is going to get the job done. The Lunaz Phantom allowed me to dream for a day.