[Auto-Moto] Rolls Royce Phantom

[-Sethu]

The concepts of largesse and largeness, as easy as those words may be to confuse on a Scrabble board, can rarely be applied to a new car as faithfully as to Rolls-Royce’s biggest showroom model: the inimitable Phantom.

It’s also a platform ready to accept the electrified powertrain technologies of the near future and will go on to serve as the basis of every Rolls-Royce model to come. That means it will sever the most important material link between some of those existing models and other BMW Group cars, a link that has been used as a stick with which to beat Rolls-Royce in recent years.

If the outgoing Phantom was the company’s ‘renaissance car’, this one could be just as significant for what’s underneath it and for what it’s capable of. The Phantom has stood relatively unchallenged at the top of our superluxury vehicle class for as long as that class has formally existed, combining unmatched extravagance and grandness with supreme comfort and refinement, remarkable drivability and incredible sense of occasion.

 

A full Autocar road test on the new-generation version is, in our eyes, an absolute necessity – and, for the sake of the historical record if nothing else, we’re very glad that Rolls-Royce has adopted the same view.

It’s time to reveal, then, exactly how groundbreaking this 2.8-tonne, 5.8m, handbuilt symbol of wealth and status really is, assessed on city roads and across country; both on the motorway and in the motorway service station car park; and measured in objective terms by satellite timing gear and – perhaps even more important – by the decibel.

 

Having already sampled the Rolls-Royce's new flagship abroad, we’ve rather looked forward to getting the Phantom on UK roads, not least because Rolls-Royce makes some whopping claims about its ride quality. The suspension apparently makes ‘millions’ of calculations every second, reacting not only to physical inputs but also information from a windscreen-mounted camera. The eight-speed gearbox also uses satellite data to prepare for the road ahead, and there’s a layer of foam within the vast tyres to ameliorate roar.

This, we suppose, is precisely what you’d want to hear if you were spending roughly £400,000 on a car, but is it borne out on the road?

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/rolls-royce/phantom