All Entries Tagged With: "rolls royce ghost"
Rolls Royce Ghost Pics Online
Baby Rolls on parade.
By Gunnar Heinrich | IMG Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
CASTING a lovely specter upon the automotive landscape, like an apparition the Rolls-Royce Ghost has finally made its official appearance online.
Not only is the Ghost a bold step into a higher production volume for the marque, the car’s marketing is an even edgier departure from the Royce’s stolid past. With edgy video and imagery that’s set in sunny locales (not rainy Britannia), the new Roller is aimed towards a younger demographic with cash to burn.
Evidence of this new, hipper direction is in a smaller, sportier profile that features narrow c-pillars (or is it d-pillars in this case?) which – gasp! -allow outsiders to see the lucky occupants inside and don’t obscure three lanes of following traffic.
Also, the new car is stuffed full of electronic goodies that bring comfort to a new level of penultimate.
Each corner is suspended by air, articulated by double wishbones up front and a rear multi-link axle. Electronics compute load calculations every 2.5 milliseconds, and Rolls says it can detect if a passenger moves from one side to the other and compensate accordingly. It can also raise or lower the car by an inch to help getting in and out (although we question the usefulness of 25mm adjustment) – Tim Pollard, CAR.
The sedan does feature similar attributes with the BMW 7-Series. By no means a bad thing, but the lower bolster of that rear bench is awfully familiar…
Having oggled at and sat in the 200EX – the Ghost’s almost identical concept – I can report that in touch ‘n feel, the execution is flawlessly perfectionist as any Rolls aficionado would come to expect. That said, with modernity comes some loss of tradition.
The leather (a hallmark of any true Royce) is, for all intents and purposes, supple, sweetly scented, delicate to the touch and very much what you’d find in a BMW 7er. The same is true for the glossy wood.
It’s all very Bavarian – just as the Bentley Continental Flying Spur has that inescapable Audi-feel.
But not to worry, traditionalists, the car’s design remains a beautiful step forward that keeps the marque’s overall “mission statement” well in tact.
Showing in Frankfurt, the new “baby Rolls” will waft onto the world’s boulevards in the autumn of next year.
Ghost
The late Lord Montagu, 2nd Baron of Beaulieu, early Rolls-Royce patron
By Gunnar Heinrich
NINETY -four years ago, John Walter Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu- known to his peers in Westminster more briefly as Lord Montagu of Beaulieu – lost the greatest love he had ever known.
The UK’s Daily Mail retells the realization of one man’s incalculable grief:
“You can still feel the regret and despair, heavy in every word. ‘I should have got a stronger grip on her,’ wrote Lord Montagu in a letter home from his sickbed in Malta in 1916, after being rescued from the wreckage of the SS Persia which was hit by a German torpedo while crossing the Mediterranean. But to his enduring pain, Eleanor Thornton, his traveling companion, personal assistant and beloved mistress, had not been saved.”
The love Lord Montagu lost was the same young lady whose form provided the inspiration for the Spirit of Ecstasy emblem. It was Eleanor in all her vibrance and Victorian virtue who modeled for sculptor George Sykes and who, thanks to Lord Montagu, lived to see her jubilant likeness embrace the wind and the elements at the summit of every Rolls-Royce grille.
One century and many lifetimes later, Rolls-Royce designers seem to be drawing new inspiration from Lord Montagu’s extinguished flame – first through video references online and now in name. No longer RR4 or 200EX, the codenames have been shed to reveal the new title: “Ghost”.
And considering that the British couple rode in a Silver Ghost at the early days of the 20th Century, it seems right that Rolls-Royce should continue into the 21st Century with a fresh model that channels the romantic essence of their haunting amour fou.
