Ghost rider
Tom Otley experiences the spirit of ecstasy as he takes a Rolls on the road
Some people buy a Rolls-Royce to be chauffeured around in, while other owners prefer to drive it themselves. There are arguments for both, but since selfdriving technology is fast approaching that will make us redundant behind the wheel, I’m determined to make my own mistakes for as long as possible.
Pulling out of the hotel car park in a vehicle over 5.4 metres long and worth more than £210,000, I wished I had a chauffeur to negotiate the midmorning London traffic. I couldn’t let my nerves show. People were staring.
The new Rolls-Royce Ghost Series II has plenty of tech to help beginners such as myself. An update of the model first launched in 2009, it joins a spookily named, if historically minded, line-up that includes the sporty Wraith and the 5.8-metre-long Phantom.
It has allowed the company to incorporate new technology, much of which makes driving more pleasurable. For instance, cameras show the view all around the vehicle and warn when others come too close – also useful for squeezing through the width restriction barriers that litter London.
The LED headlights have a new look, and reflectors inside the lamp move in response to the steering wheel. As I navigated the country lanes of Kent on a dim, wet day, they gave a whiter, brighter light and, instead of dipping when an oncoming driver approached, deflected the light to prevent them from being dazzled – meaning I could keep driving on full beam, guilt-free.
The Satellite Aided Transmission was first introduced on the Wraith last year and uses GPS data to anticipate what’s around the next corner, taking into account your driving style (increasingly confident, but still fairly haphazard, in my case) to select the most appropriate gear from the eight-speed ZF gearbox. This helps you feel in control of a 2.5-tonne vehicle being propelled forward by an astonishingly powerful 6.6-litre, twin-turbo V12 engine.
Rolls-Royce is keen to position the new Ghost as the sort of car entrepreneurs and captains of industry would buy to reward themselves. It’s easy to be cynical about such targeting, especially for a car that will cost the best part of a quarter of a million pounds, but both the exterior and interior are the opposite of “bling” or new wealth. The luxuries seem well thought out, even practical, with electronically adjustable thigh supports for front-seat passengers – I wish airline seats had these instead of legrests. There’s also an understated feel to the design, from the woodwork to the tapered “wake channel” on the bonnet, as if emanating from the Spirit of Ecstasy’s wings – “evoking the sight of a jet’s vapour trail”.
If you have to justify this sort of expenditure to yourself (or others), you’ll grasp at anything, so how about the in-built wifi, helping you to stay connected with email, file sharing and video-conferencing? It’s unlikely to convince the board that this should be your company car, though. Besides, even if being driven, it would seem a shame to let work distract you from the experience of being on board, or from listening to the audio system, which, using sensors, adapts itself to outside noise to optimise the acoustic balance from the 18 speakers.
The best advice is to focus on what matters – the ride, the speed, the power, and the luxury of driving a car such as this one. As a reward, it’s a very understandable one.
Rolls-Royce Ghost Series II; from £216,864. rolls-roycemotorcars.com