Rolls-Royce has built a car so extravagant that it apparently wasn’t enough simply to make it. The company now has to spend 350 collective weeks trying to break it.

This is Project Nightingale, a limited-run Coachbuild Collection of just 100 cars, combining Rolls-Royce’s famously excessive approach to luxury with an all-electric powertrain.

And because its wealthy owners apparently intend to do something outrageous like actually drive them, Rolls-Royce is testing the cars everywhere from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Circle and the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula.

It’s a suitably grand continuation of a tradition started by Sir Henry Royce more than a century ago, when his engineers subjected Rolls-Royces to punishing testing around the French Riviera and beyond.

Project Nightingale has already endured more than 1,430 hours of aerodynamic development, and the fun is only getting started. The prototypes will eventually reach 155 mph at a private high-speed facility, where engineers will obsess over wind noise until it is barely audible.

Then there’s the wind deflector. It’s electric, naturally, and has been designed to stop high-pressure air from barging into the cabin when the roof is down. Because apparently even the wind needs to behave itself in a Rolls-Royce.

The roof gets similar treatment. Its construction includes cashmere, fabric and high-performance composites, and it will be tested at temperatures reaching 80°C. Meanwhile, the rather wonderfully named Piano Boot will be opened and closed up to 15,000 times to make sure its elaborate cantilevered mechanism remains as effortless as the day the first owner presses the button.

And that is the point of Project Nightingale. This isn’t merely a car being tested to see whether it works. It is being tested to see whether every tiny detail feels sufficiently Rolls-Royce.

Because when you are building a ££££££ luxury electric grand tourer for people who can probably fly everywhere anyway, the difficult bit isn’t making it fast.

It’s making sure the boot sounds right.