After months of suspense, Rolls Royce has finally premiered its latest Ghost, a machine that comes with new suspension, chassis and cabin tech that make it the most advanced Rolls yet.
As revealed by Torsten Müller-Ötvös, Chief Executive Officer, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, in his presentation during the virtual world premier held on Tuesday, the first Goodwood Ghost was a response to a whole new generation of clients, both in age and attitude.
“These men and women,” he explained, “asked us for a slightly smaller, less ostentatious means to own a Rolls-Royce. The success of the product we created for them fulfilled our most ambitious expectations. Over its ten-year lifespan, which began in 2009, Ghost has become the most successful model in the marque’s 116-year history.
“To create a new product that would resonate with our Ghost clients for the next ten years meant we had to listen carefully to their demands. Today we set new standards in customer centricity by creating a completely new motor car for a unique group of Rolls-Royce’s clients. These business leaders and entrepreneurs demand more of their Ghost than ever. They require a new type of super-luxury saloon that is dynamic, serenely comfortable and perfect in its minimalism. Ghost is this product.”
According to Müller-Ötvös, the only components carried over from the first Goodwood Ghost were the Spirit of Ecstasy and umbrellas.
“Everything else,” he stressed, “was designed, crafted and engineered from the ground up. The result is the most technologically advanced Rolls-Royce yet. It 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.”
Putting the new Ghost Together
To put together the new Ghost, while the marque’s designers, engineers and craftspeople reportedly demanded the freedom to create a very specific personality for new car, they were only able to create an authentically super-luxury product without the constraints of platforms used to underpin lesser, high-volume vehicles. Hence, the Rolls-Royce proprietary aluminium spaceframe architecture.
Reserved exclusively for Rolls-Royce, this architecture already underpins its flagship, Phantom, and its transformative SUV, Cullinan.
Exterior Design
New Ghost reflects an evolved appreciation of luxury, one defined by minimalism and purity, but underpinned by great substance.
Its front end is an exemplar of the design team’s obsession with reduction. Owing to the hand-welded aluminium body structures, the main structure of the car appears as one fluid canvas, uninterrupted by shut lines, recalling the coachbuilt Silver Dawn and Silver Cloud. For the first time, the Spirit of Ecstasy is not surrounded by panel lines but rather stands sits within her own ‘lake’ of bonnet.
Turning to the flanks, a single straight stroke is used to emphasise the motor car’s length. The lower ‘waft line’ borrows from boat design and uses reflection to lighten the surfacing and create a pure, uncomplicated sense of motion.
Moving to the glasshouse, it is wilfully neutral, with both doors sharing an equally proportioned window graphic, gesturing that new Ghost strikes a balance as both a driver-oriented and a chauffeur-driven car. A subtly arched roof line gently proclaims its dynamic intent. The rear end follows this sense of movement and resolves in a taper.
The subtle near-square rear light graphic has become a tenet of contemporary Rolls-Royce design. It remains, but has been modernised with a slight forward tilt. Not surrounded by shut lines, it appears as if it is an island within the painted surface.
Moreover, in terms of dimension, its overall length has grown by 89mm, compared to the first Goodwood Ghost, to 5546mm, and its overall width has grown by 30mm to 1978mm. Significant changes were also made to the double-skinned bulkhead and floor structure packaging.
Interior
Further demonstrating the marque’s competence in leathercraft, complex, busy stitchwork has been eschewed for scant but incredibly long and perfectly straight lines, again welcoming scrutiny from the marque’s clients.
Wood sets for new Ghost are available in an open-pore finish, bravely showcasing materials in their naked form. Indeed, two new finishes have been developed specifically for the motor car. The first is Obsidian Ayous, inspired by the rich versatility of colours found in lava rock. The second is Dark Amber; this introduces subtle glamour to the interior suite by integrating veins of fine aluminium particles into the dark wood. As with the leather finishes, this material is left exposed as long, single-veneer leaves, bisected only by cold-to-the-touch real metal vents, through which MEPS-filtered air reaches the cabin.
New Ghost benefits from a new Micro-Environment Purification System (MEPS). Existing air filtration technology was further developed to incorporate a full suite of hardware and software improvements. Highly sensitive Impurity Detection Sensors were introduced to detect ambient air quality, automatically switching fresh air intakes to Recirculation Mode if unacceptable levels of airborne contaminants are present. This channels all cabin air through a nanofleece filter, which is capable of removing nearly all ultra-fine particles from the Rolls-Royce’s micro- environment in less than two minute.
Power
Client feedback asking for near-instant torque and near-silent running led the marque to further develop the Rolls-Royce 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine. A bespoke Ghost engine map was created to ensure ample performance for this dynamic motor car, delivering 563bhp/420kW and 850Nm/627lb ft of torque to the all-wheel steer, all-wheel drivetrain. Commensurate with clients’ expectations, maximum torque is available from just 1600rpm – only 600rpm above tick-over. To further refine its already remarkable acoustic properties, the air intake system incorporated larger porting to reduce engine presence in the interior suite.
The car comes with an all-wheel drivetrain, all-wheel steering and completely redesigned Planar Suspension System, which further enhances the marque’s hallmark Magic Carpet Ride. This was achieved without compromising the motor car’s low centre of gravity, which aids cornering dynamics.
Equipment
The new ghost comes with an illuminated, which remains completely invisible while not operational. To achieve this, three layers of composite materials are used. The first is a piano-black substrate, which is laser etched to allow light to shine through the wordmark and star cluster. This is then overlaid with a layer of dark-tinted lacquer, hiding the lettering when not in use.
Finally, the fascia is sealed with a layer of subtly tinted lacquer before being hand polished to achieve a perfectly uniform, 0.5mm thick high-gloss finish, matching other high-gloss accents incorporated into the interior.
Also the car incorporates a resonance chamber into the body’s sill section; the frequency response of the Bespoke Audio speaker component defined the chamber’s size and shape. In essence, this transforms the motor car into a subwoofer.
A powerful amplifier controls 18 channels (one for each speaker), providing a 1300W output. State-of-the-art optimisation technology and high-precision magnesium-ceramic compound speaker cones enable infinitesimal changes in sound with an outstanding frequency response.
Further equipment includes: LED and laser headlights with more than 600m of illuminated range, vision assist, including day- and night-time wildlife and pedestrian warning; alertness assistant; a four-camera system with panoramic view, all-round visibility and helicopter view; active cruise control; collision warning; cross-traffic warning; lane departure and lane change warning; an industry-leading 7×3 high- resolution head-up display; Wi-Fi hotspot; self-park; and the very latest navigation and entertainment systems.
Last Words
New Ghost is perfect in its simplicity, but creating this pure and detoxifying environment was one of the greatest challenges in the marque’s history. Indeed, new Ghost is the most technologically advanced motor car Rolls-Royce has ever produced.
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