Over two unforgettable days, our motoring sages and VIP guests embarked on an exhilarating journey from Surfers Paradise to Brisbane and back again—traversing an irresistible selection of terrain in our exotic rides, from deserted rainforest-lined b-roads to testing mountain switchbacks with dizzying—sometimes heart-in-mouth—views over the southern Queensland peninsula. And as befitting an event starring the crème de la crème of auto marques, we did so while savouring the best in luxury and gastronomy—capped off with an extraordinary superyacht experience at Sanctuary Cove.

The ten contenders for the Car of the Year were not the only dream machines on show. The first day’s adventure kicked off at the Langham Hotel and included a midday pit stop at the glorious Beechmont Estate, where our fleet of drivers were greeted by a stunning array of vintage cars exhibited in a concours d’elegance-style display.

The sumptuous feast for the eyes on offer at Beechmont, a quaint country village located between the Lamington Plateau and Tamborine Mountain, was followed by a meal for the ages prepared by executive chefs Chris and Alex Norman at the property’s hatted restaurant, The Paddock.

Then, itching to remount our steeds, it was time to hit the road again, with our drivers—all sporting Onitsuka Tiger’s new driving shoes—hightailing it to Brisbane and The Calile Hotel, a property which has been scooping accolades like Jay Leno collects supercars.

After some much needed relaxation by the pool, that evening the drivers and press were joined by local luminaries in the hotel’s private dining room. Over an extravagant banquet they got to compare notes on marvels of engineering and design that they’d had the chance to pilot all day. They were also treated to a showcase of spectacular Jacob & Co. timepieces and Hardy Brothers jewellery and an elegant sufficiency of 40-year Glenfiddich whiskey served in gold cups worth $60,000 a pop. It made for animated discussions and more than a little impromptu shopping.

And did we mention the luxury yacht experience? After a full itinerary of adventures on the road, the day ended with an invigorating late-afternoon of luxuriating aboard two new Riviera Yacht releases—the 6800 Sport Yacht and the 585 SUV—where our intrepid drivers and assorted press got to literally and figuratively take their hands off the wheel and make a case for their car of the year. As the forthcoming pages attest, they were more than spoiled for choice. But who would take centre stage on the winners’ podium?

OVERALL WINNER

Rolls-Royce Spectre

BEST SPORTS CAR

Aston Martin Vantage

BEST LUXURY HYBRID

Bentley Flying Spur

BEST PERFORMANCE SUPERCAR

McLaren 750S

BEST ROADSTER

Mercedes-AMG SL634MATIC+

BEST CAR DESIGN

Maserati GranTurismo

BEST ELECTRIC PERFORMANCE CAR

Porsche Taycan Turbo S

BEST SUV

Ferrari Purosangue

Cruise along to robbreport.com.au/events for more supercars and luxury motoring.

After the seemingly never-ending hype around steel sports watches, dress watches have been making a comeback. But it’s not just the average 42 mm dress watch that’s sparking interest (although, those too, are in the running), but also funky vintage diamond-accented timepieces or small-sized, almost feminine pieces are trending. Recently, actor Paul Mescal was spotted on the red carpet of the Annual Academy Museum Gala wearing a Cartier Tank Mini with his tux, while sports legend Dwyane Wade wore a 28 mm diamond Tiffany & Co. Eternity watch with his black tie ensemble to the same event. While these guys were wearing dress watches in their intended setting, here we show you how to make a dress watch work for casual weekend wear too.

Try dabbling in unexpected pairings like an army green Ghiaia safari jacket with a vintage Chopard Happy Diamonds timepiece or Breguet Classique Ref. 7147 (the ultimate dressy timekeeper) with a Louis Vuitton sweatsuit and a Brioni overcoat. Anything goes these days and the more unexpected the timepiece, the stronger the statement. It’s good news all around—for your wardrobe and your investments in the vault.

Above: Blancpain 39.7 mm Villeret Ultraplate in 18-karat red gold, $69,675; Tod’s faux-shearling and denim jacket, $5,6859; Tom Ford cashmere and silk turtleneck, $2,535.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY MATALLINA. WATCH EDITOR, PAIGE REDDINGER. FASHION DIRECTOR, ALEX BADIA. STYLE EDITOR, NAOMI ROUGEAU.

Jaeger-LeCoultre 40 mm Reverso One Duetto Jewellery in 18-karat pink gold and diamonds, $79,560. Right: Chopard 32 mm vintage Happy Diamonds in 18-karat white gold and diamonds, $19,930, analogshift.com; Ghiaia cotton safari jacket, $1,426; Eton cotton T-shirt, 358; Hermès denim trousers, $1,674.

Audemars Piguet 34 mm vintage automatic ultrathin watch in 18-karat white gold and diamonds, $9,300, classicwatchny.com. Right: Cartier 41.4 mm Tortue in platinum, $35,600, limited to 200; Gabriela Hearst hand-knit cashmere sweater, $2,500; Officine Générale cotton-poplin shirt, $315.

Breguet 40 mm Classique Ref. 7147 in 18-karat white gold, $37,468; Brioni wool and cashmere overcoat, $12,233, and silk knit crewneck sweater, $2,224; Louis Vuitton wool track pants, $2,120, and wool hooded jacket, $5,002. Right: Patek Philippe 39 mm Calatrava Ref. 6119R-001 in 18-karat rose gold, $52,791.

Piaget 45 mm Andy Warhol in 18-karat rose gold, $69,198. Right: Rolex 29 mm vintage King Midas Ref. 4342 in 18-karat yellow gold, $28,301, classicwatchny.com; Brunello Cucinelli denim shirt, $1,586; Tom Ford cotton chinos, $1,259; Berluti leather belt, $1,132.

Model: Arthur Sales
Grooming: Amanda Wilson
Senior market editor and casting: Luis Campuzano
Photo director: Irene Opezzo
Photo assistant: Alejandro Suarez
Prop stylist: Elizabeth Derwin

Some brand stories come so swathed in lashings of romance, it’s hard to know where to begin. Ask Andrew Doyle, founder of luxury knitwear brand Formehri, and he’ll tell you that the true essence of his company lies in its name— or, rather, its namesake: his wife, Mehri.

“The story of our brand is really the story of our family,” Doyle says. The two now have three children, having met in their twenties while working for the same company. “We were on our honeymoon, I think, 11 years ago, and she made a passing comment that it was her dream to live in the south of France. I don’t know why, but I decided there and then that I was going to make it happen for her.”

Now, Doyle splits his time jet-setting between Monaco and Sydney, but he was born and raised among the more prosaic pastures of Canberra, working for much of his twenties and thirties building a successful finance recruitment company. Having taken an interest in menswear from an early age, he spent most of that time moonlighting as one of the internet’s OG menswear bloggers under the moniker Timeless Man. The site gravitated towards covering smaller, artisanal producers, eschewing big brands and splashy catwalk shows in favour of those making bespoke garments and accessories with an emphasis on quality over quantity.

“I did it for free for a decade,” he recalls. “I was always drawn to craftspeople who were creating something authentic and product driven. I would save up my money, go have these people make me a jacket and write about the process. I just found it so interesting. Pretty soon I started thinking that I’d love to do this myself.”

One would expect a chance meeting in, say, Paris or Florence to be the scenario in which Doyle got his look-in. Rather, it was on a dusty salt flat in Bolivia where, while on holiday with his wife, an opportunity presented itself to him. There, taking in the near-overwhelming silence of the Salar de Uyuni, he was reminded of nearby farmers raising vicuña: a pint-sized relative of the Alpaca prized for its ultrafine wool.

“I’d first learned about vicuña some years earlier,” Doyle says. “A contact of mine had paid John Cutler something like $50,000 to make a vicuña overcoat for him, so once I got back to La Paz I asked him to put me in touch with the local producers here.” Vicuña wool, for the uninitiated, is among the most prized fabrics in the world, orders of magnitude lighter and finer than merino or cashmere. Endemic to remote, high-altitude plateaus throughout the Andes, most vicuña are wild-farmed and, being slow-growing, hand-sheared just once every three years. Most fleeces are bought in bulk by a well-known luxury knitwear brand that, for reasons that will soon become apparent, shall remain nameless.

Back in the Bolivian capital, Doyle met with someone representing the nation’s rural community of vicuña farmers. There, he learned of the mass exploitation taking place, not just in Bolivia but across other South American countries. Despite the price of vicuña garments steadily rising, the wholesale prices paid to producers for their wool has dropped by a third in the last decade—an issue that, for those inclined to do a quick Google search, has seen our nameless brand hauled in front of a US Congressional caucus.

“They’re pretty seriously impoverished,” says Doyle. “They’re very isolated. They’re up on this plateau, really struggling day to day. Meanwhile these big brands are buying up the bulk of the wool—which is not cheap—and yet the farmers are seeing almost none of the profits. That’s when all the pieces came together for Mehri and me. We said: ‘This is it.’”

“I think it was even the next day,” he continues, “I got back in touch with them and said: ‘What if we start a company that can make the finest product in the world and we’ll give you 10 percent of everything we make in profit?’ And they just said, ‘That’s exactly what we’ve been looking for.’ As the story evolved, I felt 10 percent wasn’t enough. So now we reserve 10 percent for communities in South America, and then another 10 percent for a range of charities around both Monaco [where Andrew Doyle has a factory] and Africa, with a focus on people who really need it.”

This is, of course, all just empty talk without the product to back it up. And while Formehri is still very much a brand in its larval stage, the quality of its garments is rapidly garnering acclaim. The brand’s core range revolves around sweaters and cardigans, spun at a family-owned mill in Bologna and hand-finished in Monaco—made to order and priced accordingly. Formehri’s sweaters start at around $7,500, its shawl-neck cardigans tipping the fiscal scales at around $21,900.

Already, this plucky upstart is turning heads in the right circles. The brand recently completed a trunk show at London’s Baudoin & Lange and has recently begun a residency at famed Parisian tailors Camps de Luca. “We met Andrew many years ago as a client,” founder Julien De Luca tells us. “The philosophy behind Formehri is very similar to our own vision of craftsmanship. Formehri understands craftsmanship, patience and the time necessary to create not just a garment, but a story and a distinct moment behind each piece. Formehri goes far beyond a brand—it comes from a man truly dedicated to excellence.”

Neither the Honourable Charles Rolls nor Sir Henry Royce were car guys, not initially anyway. First and foremost, they were electricity men, apostles of the current. The former’s obsession flowered early; aged nine, the young Brit was already toying with this burgeoning fin de siecle phenomenon, mounting electrical rigs at the family’s ancestral pile in Wales. At the same time, a grown-up Royce was busy earning his entrepreneurial chops, heading a thriving enterprise in Manchester that made small domestic appliances—doorbells, lamps, fuses and the like.

It is, then, little wonder the pair were early electric-car adopters, experimenting with the energy after launching their nascent automobile company in 1904. Though electricity eventually lost out to combustion in the arm-wrestle for early-20^th-century tech supremacy, anyone who has ever sat in or steered the Rolls-Royce Spectre—the marque’s first fully electric ultra-luxury coupe—will tell you that the 120 years it has taken for the company to disrupt the entire industry has been worth the wait. Revenge is sweet. And silent.

Rolls-Royce’s “magic carpet ride” has been synonymous with the brand since debuting in 2003’s Phantom VII, but the sensation of deep-space-like serenity has been compounded to the nth degree in the absence of oil power (though, admittedly, few Rolls-Royces throughout history can be described as rowdy). On occasion, one almost feels transcendentally detached from the current time dimension, as the Planar Suspension System’s cameras scan tarmac conditions ahead—adjusting settings in real time to proffer maximum comfort—and the vehicle’s aerodynamic silhouette makes a quiet mockery of wind resistance and other established laws of physics. 

Factor in that other meditative proprietary feature, the Starlight Headliner, which projects 4,796 fibre-optic stars onto the roof and two doors, and before long the Spectre is morphing into something beyond a mere automobile—echoes of a life-affirming business-class-jet flight, flashes of sub-orbital-spacecraft awe.

Other determinants tipped the balance in the Spectre’s favour when the time came for our judges to nail their sails to the mast: the cabin’s handcrafted wood, leather and metal detailing; the optional Champagne Chest for pure, unabashed extravagance of it all; and those 23-inch wheels, the first time Rolls has fitted this size to a coupe since 1920s, lend the vehicle an air of Great Gatsby meets late-’90s hip-hop cool.

Most of all, however, the Spectre takes centre position on this year’s podium for broader, existential reasons. Because when the history of post-Prius electric motoring is eventually written, the production of this EV will surely be recognised as a hill-cresting moment in technology, a landmark in modern engineering, the exact point when the power struggle between electricity and combustion erred towards the new-but-old energy. The best Rolls-Royce ever? Maybe. The best EV ever? You know it.

So, Spectre: take the podium, wear the wreath, pop the Dom P—the world is yours.

In Italy, beauty is not optional, it is demanded. This is a nation whose fashion houses treat clothing as high art; a people to whom hand-rolling individual pasta pieces into decorative shapes is an artisanal obsession; a country that employs polizia who’ve been plucked straight from the Milanese catwalks… or that is how it seems. 

Cars are, of course, not immune from Italy’s rat-race of beautification, and to stand out in the company of auto aestheticians like Ferrari, Lamborghini and Alfa Romeo is no cinch—and yet this year Maserati managed to do so with the Gran Turismo, a sculpted, long-hooded fastback (hand-built in the motherland, natch) that will keep Modena’s chiropractors minted for the model’s life term, given how many unprepared Tuscan neck muscles will be craning as this peach homes sashays by.

While surface-level joy can be had swooning at the Gran Turismo, the allure runs deeper than just elegant lines and sexy rims. The interior hosts a quiet riot of high-end materials—leather, carbon fibre, Alcantara—which collude to create the refined cabin tableau.

Comeliness aside, it would be churlish, and vaguely vacuous, not to mention what a beguilling motor this Maserati is. Rivals in the GT firmament may flex more raw power, but few will be able clock the big testosterone numbers with such composure—like a manicured Donna di Classe whose immaculately quaffed hair refuses to be ruffled in the wind. Even so, its 0-100 km/h sprint time of 2.7 seconds stands as one of the best in class.

Ultimately, there is good reason why grand tourer cars tend to be the purest expression of automotive beauty: their modus operandi is delivering long, comfortable, cross-country journeys with panache—and no one wants to squander life’s precious hours in an ugly car, not least an Italian.

The Numbers (Trofeo model)

Engine: 3.0-litre Nettuno twin-turbo V6

Power: 410 kW

Torque: 650 Nm

Transmission: 8-speed auto

Acceleration (0-100 km/h): 3.5 seconds

Top speed: 320 km/h