How to clean a really quite filthy $550k Rolls-Royce Spectre Black Badge

There are few things more terrifying than skidding a Rolls-Royce Spectre Black Badge across a salt lake. Actually, there is: cleaning it afterwards and pretending it’ll look brand new again.

That’s exactly what Tom ‘Wookie’ Ford faces in episode two of Top Gear: Speed Cleans – the series where he tackles the world’s filthiest, most fear-inducing cleaning jobs, armed with little more than optimism and microfibre.

Four hours on the clock. One very nervous detailing team. And a $550,000 EV coated in salt, dust and regret. The Spectre, if you didn’t know, is Rolls-Royce’s all-electric flagship – nearly three tonnes of serenity and audacity, wrapped in silence and hand-stitched leather. The Black Badge is the go-faster, moodier version. This one happens to be white-on-white, which is a bit like wearing a wedding dress to a mud-wrestling match.

So how do you return half a million dollars’ worth of automotive sculpture to showroom perfection without causing an international incident? Wookie grabs a mountain of microfibre towels, a few gallons of snow foam, and a team of expert speed-cleaners to find out. The mission: make the Spectre shine again – inside, outside, and under the ticking clock.

Big car. Small window. One man trying to keep the world’s poshest EV from becoming the BBC’s most expensive write-off. If you’ve ever wondered what happens when aristocratic excess meets off-road idiocy – or how long it takes to remove powdered glass from a £500k Rolls-Royce – you’re about to find out.

Click play on the video above to witness one man, one Rolls-Royce, and several existential crises.