First Drive | Rolls-Royce Ghost
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Neat Spirit Is the new ‘small’ Rolls-Royce Ghost blighted by its BMW parts? Not at all, says Steve Cropley. It’s a proper Rolls and a great driver’s car PHOTOgRAPHY Julian mackie
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First Drive | Rolls-Royce Ghost
a
s we passed 100km/h for the first time in the new Rolls-Royce Ghost, a tight cluster of water droplets started appearing in the centre of the lower windscreen – just as it did on the first Rolls I ever drove, a Silver Shadow, 33 years ago. Just as it did in later years, in Spirits, Spurs, Seraphs, a Corniche and in the recent Phantom. Thank God, I thought. This is a real Rolls-Royce. It’s all the fault of the Silver Lady. Rolls-Royce motor cars, and especially their grilles, may get slowly more streamlined as the years roll by, but there isn’t much you can do about the drag factor of the Spirit of Ecstasy. She stands there, proud as ever, causing eddies in the air that flows past her, so that when you drive in the drizzle which is such a part of British life, water droplets converge on the screen directly behind her, and always have done. For me, it’s how you tell you’re in a proper Rolls-Royce. Until now, there has been sporadic conjecture about the genuineness of the Ghost. This new circa-$250,000 model – a little smaller, but more powerful and faster than the $350,000 Phantom flagship – uses a steel monocoque chassis instead of the Phantom’s bespoke aluminium spaceframe, and a steel monocoque is the form of chassis used by the new 7-series and every other mass-produced BMW. Not only that, but the Ghost is known to share some basic mechanical parts with the biggest BMW. Does this mean the Ghost is a disguised 7-series, not truly worthy of its industryleading brand values? No, it doesn’t, say BMW’s technical people, and they’re right. The Ghost is very much its own car. The fact that its air-con system, some electronics, its auto gearbox and some suspension parts are shared with the BMW is sense, but not sinister. This new “sporty” Rolls has its own chassis platform; every important dimension is unique; its suspension
delivers a different kind of performance; its design is unique and its instrument and control layouts are different even from the Phantom’s. It is as close to being a bespoke car as any 40-a-week luxury limousine can ever be. Line it up with a Phantom and you soon notice that it has a steeper windscreen rake and its roofline is 80mm (3in) lower. Although it is an imposing 5.4 metres long, it is still 440mm (17in) shorter than the big car. It also weighs 2.4 tonnes, about 200kg less at the kerb. Despite this, its twin-turbo 6.6-litre V12 engine produces about 25 per cent more power and torque than the Phantom’s different, normally aspirated unit: 563bhp at 5250rpm and 780Nm of torque from an ultra-low 1500rpm. The V12, engineers say, is a latestgeneration unit that has “some similarities” with the 6.0-litre engine in the BMW range, but both its bore and stroke are unique and it is tuned to produce the waftability to which all Rolls models aspire – even one like the Ghost, which can still accelerate strongly as it nears its governed top speed of 250km/h. Both acceleration (0 to 100 in 4.7sec) and fuel/CO2 efficiency are enhanced by BMW’s new eight-speed auto gearbox. As with the Phantom, the Ghost’s styling is the work of a small, dedicated team led by British-born design director Ian Cameron. Whereas the Phantom was created near London’s Hyde Park Corner in a specially converted studio dubbed “The Bank”, the team worked on the Ghost in a private hotel they knew well, not far from Rolls-Royce’s Goodwood factory. “It was such a convivial place,” says Cameron. “We knew the ambience would be ideal.” The Ghost draws on many of the Phantom’s cues (high bonnet, front wheels forward, thick rear pillars, long bonnet, sweeping surfaces) but, if anything, it is even better proportioned. It is the first Rolls to have its grille “countersunk” into the body, rather than
It can crack 100kmh in 4.7 seconds yet it’s also serenely hushed
You sit higher than in other saloons but the position feels sporty
providing a vertical, chromed monolith behind which the rest of the car appears to be towed. Whereas the Phantom stirred controversy, the Ghost has been much more warmly received, perhaps because there’s far more public confidence – after the appearance of three successful Phantom models – that BMW’s view of Rolls-Royce’s future was correct. When you approach the Ghost, you’re struck by the fact that it’s still a very big car, and a tall one. Pull back the mighty chromeencrusted door handle (which is in unit with the one for the typically Rolls “coach” rear door) and it’s clear, as you see the seat cushion, that you’re going to be sitting higher than the people in saloons around you. Slide in and you discover the waist of the car is high, too, just below shoulder level. So as you look forward, you sight just over the top of the beautiful steering wheel (shared with the Phantom), over the dash eyebrow and straight down the long bonnet. You don’t look on to the bonnet, but along it. That says sporty, too. Of course, this is a spacious driving position, and so is the rest of the cabin. The seats are wide; leg and head room are very generous, front and rear, without ◊
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‘ Okay,then,try it at full noise. The Ghost departsfrom the mark with a huge lunge at the horizon,yet still with hardly any noise’
Dash clock typifies the quality lavished inside
gear selector is delightfully simple to use
Controls mounted on the beautiful steering wheel combine elegant design with satisfying ergonomics February 2010 WWW.AUTOCARmAg.COm 35
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‘ The steering is so superbly accurate that you feel justified in pointing the Ghostat any small gap going’
The ride quality feels effortlessly assured and comfortable
∆ having that feeling of wasted, sprawling room typical of the true limo. That also says sporty. The driver’s seat is deep and supportive under the thighs and in the small of the back, but when you get going you discover they’re rather lacking in both side support and some of the gadgetry you’d find in a Lexus (such as adjustable side bolsters and seat cooling). Not that this is an austere car. Every single component or trim part is of surgical quality, superbly fitted and wonderful to touch. There are lots of precision-made bright metal parts and discreet shiny surfaces. The instruments – the clock and twin dials – are worthy of your mantelpiece. Yet Rolls’ designers have tried at every turn to reduce the complexity of the controls. Things feel beautifully mechanical but they’re not technical. One example: the gear selector, a gadget that often requires rather ostentatious operator skill in luxury cars, is a simple, intuitive up-or-down lever whose end you push in to get Park. Another is that the cabin temperature in each occupant’s sector is controlled by two simple wheels which you can twirl as you will, without any need to know the temperature. The starter motor whirs seamlessly, and the engine starts and settles at 900rpm,
barely murmuring. Select Drive and you gently become aware that forward creep is available. No clonk. Feed a little power and the car moves away sweetly, almost devoid of noise. It’ll keep doing that at traffic speeds. No point in listening for the engine or trying to count eight gear changes. You’ll notice the odd one, but you’ll never get them all. This is as close as anyone has yet come to the soundless engine and gearbox. Wind noise is almost entirely absent, too. All you hear is road noise, and even that is extremely subdued. In a normal car – a middle-ranking BMW, say – it would be largely drowned out. In this car, it’s what you hear if you bother to think about it. Mostly, you’re just struck by the silence. Okay, then, try it at full noise. This car bristles with electronic stability and traction controls – and under full power it needs them. It departs from the mark with a huge lunge at the horizon, yet still with hardly any noise. You’ll catch a couple of gear changes this time, instant yet impossibly smooth, but that’s all. And still there’ll be no more than a murmur of an engine note – not that you can spend much time on noise appreciation. The Ghost can surge past 100km/h in five seconds on a greasy road, so it must be doing a ton in no more than 12 or 13.
grille is integrated flush with the body, a departure for Rolls design
It turns smartly, given its weight, and is unfazed by bumps in bends
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Rolls-Royce Ghost | First Drive
And if you can find a place to maintain 160km/h for a while (as we did on the test track) you’ll discover that flooring the throttle again delivers the kind of kick you’d expect from a powerful car at 100km/h, again with no noise. If you love mechanical refinement – and surely it’s the Rolls lover’s raison d’être – you’ll be mesmerised by the Ghost. It’s all very well, this performancewith-refinement, but what happens when you get to a corner? The car turns, that’s what. Promptly and on line. You feel the mass, of course. Your entry speed to tight corners has to be well chosen and your lock application well timed. Do these
The 6.6-litre V12 deploys two turbos to muster 563bhp and 780nm
engine
Rear feels every bit as good as it looks, but the best seat in the house is probably the driver’s
BenTleY COnTInenTAl flYIng sPUR sPeeD From $245,000 4.8sec 322km/h 16.62L/100km 396g/km 2475kg
Engine layout
V12, 6562cc, twinturbocharged, petrol Installation Front, longitudinal, rear-wheel drive Power 563bhp at 5250rpm Torque 780Nm at 1500rpm Power to weight 237bhp per tonne Specific output 85bhp per litre Compression ratio 10:1 Gearbox 8-spd automatic
W12, 5998cc, twinturbocharged, petrol Front, longitudinal, four-wheel drive 600bhp at 6000rpm 750Nm at 1750rpm 242bhp per tonne 100bhp per litre 9.0:1 6-spd automatic
dimensions
smaller than the Phantom but still masses of room and, of course, rear-hinged back doors
Price 0-100km/h Top speed Economy CO2 emissions Kerb weight
ROlls-ROYCe gHOsT From $250,000 4.8sec 250km/h (limited) 13.58L/100kmg 317g/km 2435kg
Length Width Height Wheelbase Fuel tank Real-world range Boot
5290mm 1916mm 1465mm 3065mm 90 litres 542 kilometres 475 litres
at each corner
Vitals
comfort and joy
Front suspension Double wishbones, air springs, active anti-roll bars Rear suspension Multi-link, air springs, active anti-roll bars Brakes 410mm ventilated discs (f), 402mm ventilated discs (r) Wheels 8.5Jx20in, alloy Tyres 255/50 R20
things and the car holds its line perfectly in bumpy bends on narrow roads and the steering is so superbly accurate near the straight-ahead that you feel justified in pointing the Ghost at any small gap going. No need to hope: it just goes there. The wheel is lightly weighted for village driving but firm when you’re trying, just the way you want it. The best I’ve kept until last: the ride quality of this fine car. Knowing its multi-link rear suspension must resist the squat of sub-five-second 0-100km/h sprints, and accepting that its double wishbone front suspension must cope with the nosedive of repeated hard decelerations over bumps for slow country-road bends, I cannot understand how this softly sprung Ghost refuses to pitch under any circumstances. Sure, they talk about continuously adjusting dampers and ‘intelligent’, height-adjusting air springs, but some other people have those. This is about inspired tuning, plus painstaking development. No car stays as flat as effortlessly as this. Not even the Phantom. In the Ghost, it becomes a simple pleasure to drive quickly along a country road covered in evil bump combinations, serenely comfortable as you watch the car in front bucking about.
5399mm 1948mm 1550mm 3295mm 82.5 litres 604 kilometres 490 litres
Four-link, air springs, anti-roll bar Multi-link, coil springs, anti-roll bar 405mm ventilated discs (f), 335mm ventilated discs (r) 20in, alloy 275/35 R20
That’s not all. Low-rate suspensions are often susceptible to two things: taking off over humps and horrible wheel hop over jarring ruts. The Ghost hardly notices them. Humps it greets with such delicate damper control that you’d swear the car had been designed for that solitary couple of hundred metres of road. Jarring ruts it delivers so faintly to your backside that it’s as if they happened in the house next door. The new Bentley Mulsanne – due next May and undoubtedly the Ghost’s biggest rival – will have to be pretty special to improve on the standards set by this car. You may gather from all of this that I am deeply impressed with the new Rolls – its performance, its looks, its comfort and even its value for money. But I’ve learned something new about cars this good and this expensive. Most of the time, one surveys the people who drive them, presuming they do so to display wealth and emphasise one-upmanship. But I now suspect that were you or I Ghost owners, we’d spend our time behind the wheel simply appreciating the way this car goes, and the depth of its engineering. The creators of the new Ghost seem to have striven, from the beginning, to honour the great engineering traditions of Henry Royce. They have succeeded. L February 2010 WWW.AUTOCARmAg.COm 37
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