Exactly 111 years after it was first registered as intellectual property of Rolls-Royce, the instantly recognisable Spirit of Ecstasy has undergone an electrifying makeover. A sign of the times, the redesigned figurine represents the inevitable shift towards electric vehicles, with luxury car manufacturer Rolls-Royce driving towards an all-electric future. The redesigned Spirit of Ecstasy will debut on the upcoming all-electric Rolls-Royce Spectre, the British marque’s most aerodynamic model yet.
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The tangled history of the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstacy
Trademarked on 6th February 1911, the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy was created by sculptor and illustrator Charles Sykes in the early years of the 30th century. An illustrator for The Car Illustrated, Britain’s first car magazine, Sykes designed the now-iconic figurine for the magazine’s founder John Walter Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu. The Spirit of Ecstasy is widely thought to resemble the likeness of Eleanor Thornton, Montagu’s office manager with whom he conducted a 13-year affair. Living a secret double life as an exotic dancer and life model during her early 20s, Thornton later became a muse for Sykes.
In the early 1900s, Sykes produced a custom hood ornament for Montagu’s Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. Markedly similar to the Spirit of Ecstacy trademarked in 1911, the ornament was dubbed ‘The Whisper’, and was directly modelled after Eleanor Thornton. When commissioned to create the slightly altered Spirit of Ecstacy we see today, Skyes claimed his inspiration was the Greek goddess Nike of Samothrace, however, Rolls-Royce states that “the true muse was almost certainly Thornton.”
While Thornton lived long enough to see her image affixed to the front of Rolls-Royce cars around the world, she tragically died just four years later as a WWI casualty. According to Rolls-Royce, on the 30th December 1915, Eleanor Thronton and John Montagu were having lunch aboard the P&O passenger ship SS Persia. A short distance from the island of Crete,
the ship was struck by a torpedo from a German U-boat, causing the ship to sink rapidly. While Thornton – along with hundreds of other passengers – did not survive, Montagu was rescued by a passing ship after spending 38 hours on a lifeboat. While he could never publicly mourn the loss of Thornton, Montagu displayed The Whisper that took on her form atop every Rolls-Royce car he owned until his death in 1929.
The Spirit of Ecstacy seen on Rolls-Royce cars for the past 111 years was commissioned by Claude Johnson, general secretary of the Automobile Club and later a publicist for Rolls-Royce. Notably, Thornton had worked for Johnson as an assistant before being poached by Montagu. Initially called the Spirit of Speed, the title as we know her today came from a letter from Rolls-Royce to John Montagu, with the company describing the search for an ornament that would communicate “the spirit of the Rolls-Royce – namely, speed with silence, absence of vibration, the mysterious harnessing of great energy, a beautiful living organism of superb grace like a sailing yacht.” The letter continues to add that when Sykes designed his “graceful little goddess”, he had in mind “the Spirit of Ecstasy, who has selected road travel as her supreme delight and alighted on the prow of a Rolls-Royce car to revel in the freshness of the air, and the musical sound of her fluttering draperies”.
Though today the Spirit of Ecstacy is irrevocably linked with the British marque, at the time it did not receive the acclaim of Rolls-Royce co-founders. Sir Henry Royce notably disliked mascots of any kind and The Hon Charles Stewart Rolls passed away in June 1910, before seeing the beloved mascot. Until 1939, the Spirit of Ecstacy was an ‘optional extra’ on Rolls-Royce vehicles, with only around 40% of cars sporting the hood ornament. However, many have since been retrofitted.
The spirit of ecstasy, redefined
Reimagined for the eclectic era, the new Spirit of Ecstacy has been remodelled to take on a lower, more dynamic stance which is more akin to the original drawings made by Charles Sykes. A touch shorter than her predecessor, the new Spirit of Ecstacy stands at 82.73mm tall, compared to the original 100.01mm. Her robes, which flow behind her in the slipstream – often but erroneously characterised as ‘wings’ – have been subtly reshaped to make them more aerodynamic and realistic.
The most visible alteration comes in the form of her stance. While the Spirit of Ecstacy has previously stood regally with her feet together, legs straight, and tilting at the waist, the new iteration for the all-electric Rolls-Royce Spectre is a true goddess of speed. Braced for the wind, she stands with one leg forward, body tucked low, her eyes focused early ahead. Looking to the British marque’s all-electric future, these changes contribute to the Spectre’s remarkable aerodynamic properties. With a drag coefficient of 0.26, the earliest Spectre prototypes represent the most aerodynamic Rolls-Royce ever created, with this figure set to improve during the product development process.
Words by John Deckard
