Rolls-Royce has launched its new Ghost saloon, which once again will form the entry-point to the range of luxury, partially-hand-made British cars. Built, as before, in the company's factory in Goodwood, in the south-east of England (although most of the heavy-metal engineering is done in owner BMW's plants in Germany) the new Ghost is said to be all about 'post-opulent' luxury.
Chassis shared with the Phantom
What does that mean? Well, according to Rolls-Royce's CEO, Torsten Müller-Ötvös, the Ghost: "Distils the pillars of our brand into a beautiful, minimalist, yet highly complex product that is perfectly in harmony with our Ghost clients' needs and perfectly in tune with the times." To be a little more succinct, the new Ghost has been designed to be just as, if not more, luxurious than before, but a little more subtle, a little more under-the-radar, for those who prefer not to shout too loudly about how much they've just spent on a car.
Once again, the Ghost is based on the same alloy spaceframe chassis, shared with the larger Phantom and Cullinan models. All of its exterior panels are made of aluminium, and it's a little longer (by 89mm) and a little wider (by 30mm) than before.
Style-wise it's very much a gentle evolution of the previous Ghost, but Rolls-Royce says that it has gone to great efforts to minimise shut-lines and 'ungainly body seams' so the design is rather cleaner than before. The body structure is welded together by four 'craftsmen' who can do it in one go, creating a continuous seam.
570hp turbo V12
According to Rolls-Royce, previous Ghost buyers asked for greater refinement but instant torque. The existing 6.6-litre turbocharged V12 engine is carried over, but it now develops 570hp and 850Nm of torque. That monster torque figure is developed at 1,600rpm - just 600rpm above tickover. This big, patrician car will accelerate from 0-100km/h in just 4.8 seconds, but Rolls-Royce has tuned the gearbox (which once again is linked to the sat-nav so that it can better predict what gear you'll need) to provide a 'one, seamless gear' feeling.
Rolls-Royce engineers have also worked on the so-called 'Planar' suspension, developing a new damped upper-wishbone design. This is, effectively, a damper working on a damper, and the idea is to transmit as little load or impact from the suspension through to the body. The suspension also gets the camera-and-sensor-based 'Flag-Bearer' system which scans the road ahead and warns the suspension of what's coming next (that only works at speeds of up to 100km/h though).
Four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering
The new Ghost also gets four-wheel steering (more nimble at low speeds, more stable at high speeds) and, for the first time, four-wheel drive. The idea is to combine the traditional Rolls-Royce magic-carpet ride, "while also maintaining a spirited, dynamic personality."
Inside, there's more than 100kg of sound deadening material protecting you from the outside, although Rolls-Royce hasn't quite made it silent in there - too bamboozling it seems - so has tried to generate "one consistent tone" within, even drilling tiny, invisible holes in the parcel shelf to avoid the 507-litre boot generating any noise.
The interior is a little simpler in its layout than before, but with some pretty stunning detailing. The most obvious example of that being the backlit 'Ghost' panel in front of the passenger, with the name of the car illuminated and backlit by 850 tiny pinpricks of light, meant to represent stars. This intricate piece takes more than 10,000-man-hours to complete and is meant to complement the now-traditional Rolls-Royce 'starlight' headlining, in which tiny filaments of fibre-optic lights replicate the night sky over your head. (Speaking of lighting, the grille, that evocation of the Parthenon, is also now downlit at night by an LED setup, giving the Ghost a ghostly air as it passes.)
The rest of the cabin is as you'd expect - 20 cows worth of leather, open-pore wood, real metal for parts that look like metal, and - to make life truly effortless - the doors are now opened and closed electrically. As before, an extended wheelbase version will be available for those with long shins.
"The only components that we carried over from the first Goodwood Ghost were the Spirit of Ecstasy and umbrellas. Everything else was designed, crafted and engineered from the ground up. The result is the most technologically advanced Rolls-Royce yet" said Müller-Ötvös.