"The launch of a new Rolls-Royce is an historic event," says CEO Tom Purves as we sit down to dinner at West Stoke House in bucolic West Sussex, only a few miles from the Rolls-Royce factory on the Earl of March's estate at Goodwood, and in the very room where design chief Ian Cameron and team spent three months working on the Phantom back in 2000. Not as historic event as it perhaps once was, though: The 2011 Rolls-Royce Ghost sedan is the fourth new Rolls-Royce to appear since the imperious Phantom rewrote the rulebook for super-luxury cars in 2003. Or, to put it another way, Rolls-Royce has now launched as many new cars in the 11 years since BMW snatched the storied marque from under the nose of VW Group boss Ferdinand Piech as it had in the previous 50.
For all that, the 2011 Rolls-Royce Ghost is indeed an historic car: It's the first small Rolls-Royce launched since the 1949 Silver Dawn. "Small" is a relative term, however. Though 17.1 inches shorter than a Phantom sedan, the 212.6-inch Ghost is still 4.3 inches longer than a Bentley Continental Flying Spur, and weighs a not insubstantial 5450 pounds. This is not a compact econo-Rolls.
What it is, unmistakably, is a true Rolls-Royce, even though it shares some (deeply buried) hardware with the new BMW 7 Series. The Ghost is sleeker, sportier looking than any of the Phantoms, with a rakish windshield, taut shoulders, tucked-in corners, and an athletic stance. But from the moment you fire up the new 536-horsepower, 6.6-liter, twin turbo V-12 and snick the column-mounted shifter into "D", it's clear you're driving a car like no other. Like every great Rolls-Royce, the Ghost is a paragon of effortless motion, uncannily smooth and silent, with a ride like a magic carpet.
