The car that saved Rolls-Royce

Every new car is a gamble for its maker, and even the best of them make mistakes: BMW blew it with the 8-series and Mercedes with the Vaneo.

But if the flutter of mere product development isn’t enough, a manufacturer can always buy another company for the added frisson of profound corporate risk. And BMW has certainly had its entertainments with Rover, Land Rover, Mini and Rolls-Royce.

HISTORY

Rolls-Royce, bought in 1998, at least had the merit of being more digestible, but came with the multiple disadvantages of no factory (VW kept Crewe when Rolls-Royce was split from Bentley), no new products and a famous name for which it enjoyed only permission rather than possession, ownership residing with the aerospace world’s Rolls-Royce Group, maker of the immense turbofan engines that power your plane on long-haul holidays.

START FROM SCRATCH

Faced with these impediments and a fast-fossilising model range built for it by Bentley, including a just-launched Silver Seraph saloon barely meriting a bronze, BMW had every opportunity to fail. And in spectacular style, given that it had to construct a new factory, people it and convince the world that this most British of companies lay in safe, German, hands. 

Hiring designers who knew the marque, deeply analysing its history and vesting its first new model with a depth of engineering fit for a car with claims on being the very best – an approach denied this resource-starved marque for decades – was BMW’s method, and the result was hard to miss.

LOOKS

The Phantom was a big, bold, confident car with a big, bold, confident grille, a car that said “I’ve arrived” with the fanfare of a 21-gun salute. Yet there was something engagingly subtle about this car once you look past that garden gate-scaled grille, the lines aft of its nose just so, its monumental body perfectly planted on those vast wheels. Get over its subtly immodest presence – not hard when climbing aboard – and the Phantom becomes a car that’s hard to dislike, and not merely because of the orgy of elegantly rendered sumptuousness that is its interior.

The Phantom looked like the ultimate limo but at its heart it drove like a fully rounded car, a car with a complete suite of competencies that include an unexpected penchant for the athletic.

QUIET AS A MOUSE

Indulge the unseemly business of depressing the accelerator deep into the Blenheim wool carpet and you’d see the Spirit of Ecstasy rear her distant head, feel your back’s compression into lavish hide and hear remarkably little as two and a half tonnes of the world’s finest automotive componentry lunges toward amusingly unlikely feats of acceleration.

HANDLING

Carry some of this extravagantly accumulated momentum into a bend and the Phantom would negotiate it with the surety of Jeeves. Experience this sensation, or spread-eagle indulgently in the rear amid those rich furnishings, fixtures and fittings, and you’d find yourself beguiled. Willing, even, to allow yourself ‘let them eat cake’ moments as you sweep past lesser automobiles on a plane of indulgent superiority.

PRICE

With it being a Rolls-Royce the price is still exceptional to own a classic. Today, the very cheapest Phantom we could find in the UK is a 94,000 mile example from 2006, for £74,000. In America, the lowest cost example is a 34,000 miler from 2004, for $98,000. And you will have to budget for enormous running costs - the tyres are £300 each at a minimum, and its 6.75-litre V12 engine will empty your tank with suitable gusto.

Your neighbours may not love you either, as you'll need plenty of space to park - the car is 5.83 m (229.5 in) long.

AND FINALLY...

The Phantom delivered precisely the kind of life-enhancing experience that you’d hope for from a car aiming and claiming to be the best in the world.

It could so easily have been otherwise, yet its creation, and the means of creating it, is one of BMW’s finest achievements – and has utterly rejuvenated Rolls-Royce. So much so that it had the corporate self-confidence not only to replace it with another stellar Phantom - which has just received only our second 5-star roadtest score in the past year - but also to explore new horizons, with the newly unveiled Cullinan SUV.