Driving The Rolls-Royce Phantom 8 Series II

2022-12-08 11:57:14 By : Ms. Shining Xia

The Phantom 8 Series II is priced from approximately $420,000, but the options list and bespoke ... [+] possibilities are significant.

Some cars make a lasting impression more easily than others. The first Rolls-Royce to appear from under BMW’s then-new ownership of Britain’s most famous car maker, the Phantom 7 of 2003, is one such car.

British readers, and those who would habitually download episodes of TopGear back in the early-noughties, will remember when the Phantom 7 first appeared on television. The umbrellas that deployed from within the doors; the hubcap badges that were always the right way up; the whisper-quiet engine that was so smooth a coin could be balanced on it without falling over; the thick wool carpets you could lose a Chihuahua in. And of course the starlight roof lining.

The Phantom 7 was a truly special car, and one that refined the Rolls-Royce brand for the next two decades.

It was also the first RR to be born in the company’s new Goodwood headquarters, located in leafy West Sussex, a few hundred yards from the famous Goodwood Motor Circuit, and where the company has since produced benchmarks of automotive luxury like the Ghost, Wraith, Phantom Coupe, Dawn and Cullinan.

Rear-wheel-steering helps noticeably during town and city driving

Now, the factory is gearing up to say hello to the electric Spectre, and goodbye to the Phantom. The Mk7 was replaced by the Mk8 in 2017, and now the Mk 8 Series II is a mild update that will be the last to be powered by internal combustion. Rolls-Royce’s mighty 6.75-liter, twin-turbocharged V12 engine is no longer for this world, to be replaced by batteries and electric motors in a bid to make the world’s smoothest, quietest and most comfortable cars even more smooth, quiet and comfortable.

So the circa-$420,000 Phantom 8 Series II is a curtain call for internal combustion. One final statement before Rolls switches to electric.

My drive begins at Rolls-Royce’s new flagship dealership – or ‘residence’, as the company prefers – in Mayfair, West London.

Here I’m shown what choosing then personalizing a Rolls-Royce is like; the quiet, beautifully-scented bespoke commission room; the comfortable leather chairs arranged around a wooden table covered with paint and leather samples; the stories of customers spending either a brief moment in here – a quick “that one, please” before rushing to the private terminal – or an entire afternoon, sweating every detail of their very first Roller.

Driving a Phantom is far less intimidating that its vast size might have you imagine

Tears of happiness have been shed in this room, I’m told, as first-time customers realize the work they’ve put into being able to afford such a car, to make a dream come true, was all worth it.

The cars commissioned here, with Rolls-Royce’s Bespoke department, are extraordinary. You may think a Rolls-Royce is a Rolls-Royce, and from the outside that is often true. But what its customers ask of the interior design department is unlike anything else. One such Phantom Extended, is painted an unassuming, deep blue on the outside – albeit one matched to the customer’s 1934 Packard Twelve Coupe – but features a dashboard made of Koa wood.

Naturally harvested and sourced from a private collection in Hawaii, the only place the wood grows, the material was bought at auction, following three years spent looking for the right example – an example that matched a Koa wood rocking chair belonging to the customer, Jack Boyd Smith, Jr.

At night, the wood dashboard and the rest of the interior is illuminated by a roof lining filled with 1,420 fiber-optic lights arranged to depict the constellation of the night sky above Cleveland, Ohio on Mr Smith’s date of birth.

Koa wood dashboard of a Rolls-Royce Phantom

The car was delivered to Mr Smith with a Koa wood picnic hamper that took 500 hours to complete, Rolls-Royce says, and naturally there’s a Champagne fridge between the car’s rear seats, with crystal flutes and decanter.

This is how a Rolls-Royce Phantom is bought, but what is it like to drive?

You might think that, unlike the more sporting Dawn and Wraith, smaller Ghost and family-orientated Cullinan, the Phantom is strictly a car driven by chauffeurs. This is still partially true, but not as much as in the pre-BMW era.

At almost 140 inches long and 80 inches wide, the Phantom is a giant, especially when parked on a central London sidestreet. It is also noticeably higher than you might expect a sleek limousine to be, at 65 inches and with a lofty driving position. All the better for the chauffeur to maneuver, you see.

A unique example of interior embroidery, consisting of one million stitches.

Get comfortable, fix the mirror positions, marvel briefly at the ‘Gallery’, a near-infinitely personalizable section of the dashboard ahead of the front passenger, and set off into the mid-morning traffic. Gallery aside, the interior is very similar to that of other Rolls-Royces. The thin-rimmed steering wheel is light but precise, the column-mounted gear selector floats just behind your right hand, and your heels rest on leather pads surrounded by thick lambswool. It is wonderfully quiet in here, with the Phantom’s gargantuan engine making less noise than a butler clearing their throat.

Rear-wheel steering makes London’s tight streets more manageable, shrinking the Phantom’s wheelbase to that of a far smaller car by turning in the opposite direction to the front axle, then working in sync to increase stability at higher speeds.

It’s impossible not to feel like a chauffeur behind the wheel of a Phantom, but this also seems to help negotiations with fellow drivers, who perhaps assume I’m a stressed employee just trying to do my job, not a multi-millionaire forcing my land-yacht between Amazon delivery vans.

The interior is almost infinitely customisable

It’s a busy morning in London, and while I assume any rear-seat passenger would be fast asleep or hard at work, oblivious to the world around them, it’s taken only a half-hour for me to also fall into the Phantom’s cosseting embrace. Having successfully threaded between buses and construction work, I’m no longer fearful of the Phantom’s size; instead I’m enjoying the comfortable seat with massage function, the excellent sound system, the trademark Rolls-Royce ‘magic cloud’ ride quality and the quietness.

The Phantom’s size has seemingly diminished and, honestly, it’s no more intimidating to drive in town than a Bentley or a Range Rover.

We reach the open road and head west, then south towards Hampshire. While surprisingly good in city traffic, it’s on the highway where the Phantom really shines. Rolls-Royces glide like no other car, and in this environment the Phantom might be the best of the bunch. Even more comfortable and spacious than the smaller Ghost, while feeling more conventionally car-like than the towering Cullinan, the Phantom is tall for a luxury limo but lacks the excessive pitch and roll of an SUV or even a midsize crossover.

Phantom 8 Series II is expected to be the last Rolls-Royce powered by internal combustion

After a comfort stop I move for the rest of our journey to what is probably the least-used seat in a Phantom, next to the driver. I’ll save the decadence of the rear seats for the long journey back up to London this evening, so for now I’m riding shotgun and admiring the ‘Gallery’. This is a section of dashboard, ahead of the front passenger, where the owner can put almost whatever they want.

A Phantom Gallery finished in 24-carat gold

Metal, wood or leather; patterned, perforated or smooth. A light show, an ornament or a piece of art, this section epitomizes what Rolls-Royce’s Bespoke department is capable of. Customers have asked for sheets of 24-carat gold, shown above, turned into an artistic interpretation of the owner’s DNA (yes, really). One asked for artwork depicting the bursting of a star, another wanted a pattern created using 3,000 iridescent tail features, sewn onto open-pore fabric. There are more examples here and I urge you to take a look.

The first electric Rolls-Royce, called Spectre, will arrive in late-2023

After lunch, another journalist and I return to ‘our’ Phantom Series II and take up residency in the back seats for a three-hour ride home. Here is where the Rolls is truly in its element. While it is a surprisingly enjoyable and rewarding car to drive oneself, it really gets into its stride when experienced from the rear. The seats are comfortable, of course, legroom is cavernous, and the novelty of the starlight headlining never gets old. Look at it for long enough and you’ll see the occasional shooting star.

The sense of being insulated from the outside world is what a Rolls-Royce does so well, and it’s a skill the Phantom excels at more than any other. Despite its vast size, there’s a cocoon like nature to the rear seats that makes its passengers feel safe. Even as we hit heavy traffic, evening plans are rescheduled and a seven-mile drive across London takes a full hour, the Phantom evokes a sense of calm among its driver and passengers.

The Phantom exhibits the same 'magic-carpet' ride quality as other members of the Rolls-Royce range

So it is with sadness that we must say goodbye to the internally-combusted Rolls-Royce. The Phantom 8 Series II is in all likelihood the last new Rolls to have an engine, potential facelifts to other members of the range notwithstanding. And while that marks the end of one chapter of the Rolls-Royce story, the electric Spectre will be here in no time, ready to up the ante with an even quieter, even smoother and even more luxurious ride. For Rolls-Royce, the all-electric future looks very bright indeed.