Rolls-Royce Ghost 6.6 V12

While the Phantom remains the ultimate luxury car and the Cullinan has opened up Rolls-Royce to a whole new market, you can still get the full and unfiltered Rolls-Royce experience by opting for the new Ghost.

From the way it drives to the comfort and refinement it offers from within a spacious and cosseting cabin, the Ghost is something of a luxury car masterclass. It has remarkable depth of engineering and enviable attention to detail, and while you certainly pay for that level of quality, it’s clear that customers are ready and willing, as the brand’s Goodwood production facility has never been busier.

There’s a large gap in the market between “conventional” luxury cars like the Mercedes S-Class and the unmatched size, expense and luxury of the Rolls-Royce Phantom, and it’s a gap into which the Rolls-Royce Ghost neatly fits. At 5.5 metres long and two metres wide there aren’t many other gaps that’ll accept a Ghost, but those dimensions still mark out the quarter-of-a-million pound saloon as the brand’s entry-level model - and what a car it is.

This is now the second-generation Ghost, replacing the car that debuted in 2009, and while not hugely different in concept to its predecessor, the latest car sits not on a BMW platform but this time the “Architecture of Luxury” aluminium spaceframe, which also forms the basis of the Phantom VIII, and the Cullinan SUV. That’s allowed Rolls-Royce to further push its luxury-dedicated technologies and means the latest Ghost is even more capable than its predecessor.

It delivers all the qualities you’d expect of a Rolls-Royce: effortless performance from its twin-turbo BMW V12, ride quality that ranks among the best cars on sale, similarly exceptional levels of refinement, and an endless list of options that lets a customer tailor the car to their every whim. The costs of that are literal costs - the expense of buying and specifying the car, and the resources it consumes to build and run, but it’s difficult to fault the execution.

Effortless performance is the order of the day with the Ghost. Putting its twin-turbo V12 and 8-speed ZF automatic to seamless use the Ghost is barely audible most of the time, and you’ll find no paddles to control the gearbox, or driving modes to sharpen the car’s responses.

There is enormous performance on offer, but the Ghost is a car that rewards its driver more through careful, considered inputs than any other driving style. It’s capable in the corners despite some body roll, and develops its performance from little over tickover, but with (deliberately) little feel and considerable width it’s not a car you’ll find joy in hustling - instead just sit back and waft serenely along.

That’s easy to do given the Ghost’s seriously impressive ride, using front double wishbones, a rear multilink setup, air springs and adaptive damping to good effect. The car also includes Rolls-Royce’s Planar Suspension System, further damping inputs to the suspension, and Flagbearer technology, which scans the road surface with cameras and adjusts the suspension accordingly.

There is one engine available for the Ghost. Its 6.75-litre capacity may sound familiar but the unit itself is completely unrelated to the “six-and-three-quarter-litre” used in Rolls-Royce and Bentleys of old. It’s built by BMW for starters, and is also a twin-turbo V12 rather than a V8.

Rolls-Royce quotes 563bhp and an enormous 850Nm of torque, enough to launch the Ghost to 62mph from rest in 4.8 seconds, while top speed is limited to 155mph.

Inside, the Ghost truly excels. Interestingly, the architecture of the interior and dashboard hasn’t changed a great deal from the previous-generation Ghost launched in 2009, itself inspired by the Phantom launched in the early 2000s, but given those cars were hard to pick fault with in terms of design, fit and finish or comfort, perhaps the similarity is logical.

Rolls-Royce has cleaned up the details a little though, with fewer buttons on show than before, while the infotainment screen (a word we doubt Rolls-Royce itself uses) is naturally a few steps on from its predecessor in terms of quality, graphics and features.

Broadly though, the Ghost’s interior is what you make of it, with endless customisation of materials and trim elements making every Ghost a little different from its siblings - plus details like the starlight headliner and doors that close with barely any effort that separate it from any other luxury car.

Somewhere deep in the software of the Ghost’s infotainment screen will be the bare bones of BMW’s iDrive, but with different graphics, and operated by Rolls-Royce’s own take on the central control dial, it’s no mere hand-me-down. As far as rear-seat entertainment goes... well, that depends what you put in the optional fridge.