I’ve been wearing the Ultrahuman Air ring for a few months now, mostly to track sleep and recovery. But this smart ring also has a Stress Rhythm feature that monitors your heart rate variability throughout the day, placing you in one of several states – Relaxed, Stimulated, Stressed, and so on. So when I found out I was getting a Rolls-Royce Cullinan Series II for a few days, I thought it would be fun to pay closer attention to what the ring was telling me while behind the wheel.
The results were not what I expected…
My heart rate actually dipped while driving the Cullinan. That seems almost absurd when you consider what this car costs, but there’s a reason for it, and it has a lot to do with where I live…
The rural roads in the UK are notoriously bad, and that’s especially true near me. Last year, someone erected an unofficial sign reading “Welcome to Pothole World” and it made the national news. On a normal day, I drive in a constant state of alertness, steering around craters, bracing for the ones you miss, and generally treating the road like an obstacle course.
In the Cullinan, I just drove straight. The suspension absorbed everything. I could see other drivers ahead of me snaking left and right to dodge the worst of it, but I didn’t bother, I didn’t need to. The Cullinan’s air suspension simply swallowed up anything Oxfordshire’s bumpy roads can throw at it. That alone made the drive noticeably more relaxing.
The Cullinan Series II’s V12 is a magnificent thing. It produces 563bhp and 850Nm of torque, and once you’re up to speed its just effortless. Around town, it’s also surprisingly easy to place despite its size and the steering is light. But it did make me think… the Spectre has shown that Rolls-Royce can do electric cars very well, and spending a few days with the Cullinan left me wondering whether a hybrid or full EV powertrain might actually suit this car even better.
Most of the time, though, my Stress Rhythm stayed in the Stimulated category rather than tipping into Stressed, which, for context, is a good place to be. Stimulated means engaged but calm. I didn’t feel anxious while driving, which is probably how you’d want to feel on any drive.
There was one exception… parking at the local supermarket sent me firmly into the Stressed category. The Cullinan is over 2100mm wide and over 5300mm long – it overhangs a standard parking space, so finding a space in a busy carpark was genuinely anxiety-inducing. You can see the spike in the Ultrahuman app, and you can’t argue with biometric data.
But everywhere else, the car was doing its job of keeping me nice and calm.
A lot of that comes down to the interior. It’s genuinely spa-like. It’s so quiet. The surfaces are soft, the materials are extraordinary – my test car featured the new Duality Twill seating, a rayon-bamboo fabric that took over a year to develop and incorporates up to 2.2 million individual stitches and 11 miles of thread.
Even the small details contributed to the overall sense of relaxation. The air conditioning controls don’t show temperatures – just a sliding scale from blue to red, and fan speeds from low to high. That sounds like a minor thing, but there’s something genuinely relaxing about not having to decide whether you want 19°C or 19.5°C (for me, anyway).
The colour on my test car, Mustique Blue, is absolutely stunning. It’s a blue colour designed to capture the glamour of its Caribbean Island namesake, embellished with glass and mica flakes that glitter like sunlight on tropical seas (according to Rolls-Royce). It really comes alive in the sunlight. I wouldn’t have thought to spec it, but I loved it.
The chrome wheels and monogramed interior weren’t really to my taste, but as expressions of what’s possible, they’re undeniably impressive.
One feature that did genuinely delight me was the Viewing Suite – the electric fold-out picnic seats in the tailgate. Yes, they massively eat into boot space, which is a real trade-off, but sitting in them at the end of a country lane, surrounded by fields, is a lovely experience.
So, is the Rolls-Royce Cullinan the most relaxing car around? It could be! None of this is scientific, obviously, the Ultrahuman Air is a wellness device, not a clinical instrument, and I’m not claiming to have run a controlled study. But I did find it interesting that a car with this price tag consistently pushed my metrics toward calm rather than anxiety.
If I wanted to go for a relaxing drive – I’d reach for my Cullinan keys everytime.
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