THE VIEW FROM THE BACK SEAT

What’s it like to ride in the back of a Phantom? Fairly sublime, as you’d expect. It’s the noise levels, really, that set the Phantom apart from everything else. You can tell there’s lots of soundproofing by how heavy the doors are. Which is no biggie, because they’ll close electrically. Even at motorway speeds, somebody shuffling the steering wheel is about the loudest thing you’ll hear.

The seats are large and adjustable, and you won’t run out of leg room in either model. The Extended Wheelbase Phantom, which is 5762mm long, has 220mm extra in the wheelbase and all of that has gone into rear accommodation. Significantly, though, because the standard and extended-wheelbase cars were planned together and developed alongside each other, they’ve each been optimised, to provide largely the same driving and passengering experience.

In the previous model, the extended-wheelbase version wasn’t quite so well sorted as the standard car. Here, it gets different spring and damper tuning to account for the extra weight. (An extra 50kg sits largely over the rear of the car.)

As you sit there, paying no attention whatsoever to any of that, you’ll notice the ‘starlight’ headliner, in which 1300 lights are placed, to a loose pattern but actually unique to each model, in the headlining. It’s one of the lovelier ‘surprise and delight’ features of modern motoring but does mean there’s no chance to have a glass sunroof or moonroof. Rolls-royce is working on it, though, with the hope that one day you’ll be able to have both your starlights and a glass roof.