Rolls-Royce Phantom News

In a world of monstrously big SUVs and terrifyingly giant utes, there still exists the super large saloons for those who prefer to maintain a powerful presence with class and sophistication. We're talking limos - not the party kind - we mean the luxurious transport for business executives or those who prefer to be driven rather than drive.We've put together the top 5 largest cars currently sold in AustraliaLength: 5139mm Width: 2241mm Height: 1464mmA Lotus was not on my list of possible big-car candidates, but here we are with the fully electric 5139mm long Emeya four-door lift back. The Emeya is the first of its kind from a brand that forged its iconic reputation by building tiny sportscars in a shed. Things have changed and Lotus is now owned by Chinese manufacturer Geely, and the Emeya is built in China. While not the longest car here, the Emeya is actually the widest with its wing mirrors out. Despite its enormous exterior dimensions the Emeya isn’t particularly voluminous on the inside, but there are four seats and a 509-litre boot. Dual motors make 450kW and 710Nm, 0-100km/h in 4.1 seconds. The starting price is $190K.Length: 5139mm Width: 1900mm Height: 1450mmSecretly loving that a Toyota, sorry Lexus, quietly slipped into this top 5 elite party. At 5235mm end-to-end the LS isn’t small, and nor is it short on luxury.Lexus positions itself as a Benz or BMW on a budget, but with a starting price of $200,000 the LS isn’t all that cheap. The value is outstanding, however, compared to the others here, and while rolling up in a Lexus to meet business executives at the airport doesn’t have the same impact as a BMW 7 Series, but as a car girl, I honestly think the LS is more opulent.Powered by a V6 hybrid the LS is without a doubt the most reliable and cheapest to maintain limo here.Length: 5391mm Width: 1950mm Height: 1544mmBMW’s 7 Series is seriously imposing, a cliff face on wheels, with its gigantic grille and its sheer vertical drop, but it’s not just all front - this beast is 5.39m end to end. As a reference the Australian design rules state a car park space must be 5.4m long and 2.4m wide. So it’ll fit… just.   Updated for 2026/27 with BMW’s next-gen Neue Klasse design the 7 Series looks even more menacing and futuristic, while the interior is sporty and hi-tech with screens everywhere. As for powertrains you can burn fossil fuel with a 3.0-litre inline 294kW/580Nm six-cylinder engine on offer but the electric i7’s enormously powerful and torquey motors (making up to 400kW and 745Nm) and seamlessly brutal ability to get out of its own way suits the big BMW limo better.  The 7 Series starts at a list price of $272,900.Length: 5469mm  Width: 2109mm  Height: 1510mmThe Mercedes-Maybach S-Class is a super luxury version of the S-Class and it’s even longer than one too. A regular S-Class long wheelbase is 5289mm end to end while the Maybach version stretched 180mm at 5469mm in length.While more or less the same car as the S-Class the Maybach offers more legroom, more decadence and more engine - with a V12 offered on the higher grades.The Maybach is also more expensive - almost double the price of an S-Class LWB at about $630,000Length: 5982mm, width: 2154mm Height: 1656mmOf course the biggest car sold in Australia is a Rolls-Royce and it’s not just the Phantom Extended, it’s also the Ghost Extended at 5715mm and the Spectre Series II at 5453mm. But if we had included them, then the top 5 biggest cars would have all been Rollers.So we’ve gone for the largest Rolls-Royce car, the Phantom Extended, which at 5982mm is more a train than a car and 220mm longer than the standard wheelbase Phantom.While there are only four seats in a Phantom Extended they are the size of lounge chairs in a sumptuous hotel lobby and legroom is, well you can literally lie down back there because the seats become beds.In Australia the Phantom Extended starts at more than $1.1m but as with most Rolls-Royce’s the customers will want to personalise it with bespoke touches taking the final price much higher. 

Growing up, my parents went through a phase of buying well-used P4 Rovers as family cars. A (mainly) 1950s British icon with top-notch leather, proper wood trim and luxuriously thick carpet. But these hulking sedans are also cumbersome, fugly and painfully slow.

Rolls-Royce customers have always liked being removed from the world outside their windows while being chauffeured, but now they can be separated from the driver, too.

The crustiest brand in world motoring, Rolls-Royce, is planning a brighter and bolder future selling cars with youth appeal.

We've seen Tax The Rich punishing a Ferrari Enzo before, but this time they're giving us a closer look at the action in all the grace of slow-motion.It's the latest in a series from the mystery team, who take supercars to places they're never supposed to be. Over the past couple of years we've seen the Enzo, a Ferrari 288 GTO, Bugatti EB110 SS, Rolls Royce Phantom, twin Ferrari F50s and a Jaguar XJ220 thrashed through farm paddocks and down crumbling rural bitumen, dirt and gravel roads.While the identity of the Tax The Rich driver is officially unknown -- and despite his denials -- it's becoming increasingly obvious there's a connection to Harry Hunt, the rally driver son of Brit real estate magnate Jon Hunt, who's the owner of the palatial Heveningham Hall manor estate identifiable in some of the videos.Watch the Ferarri drifting, sliding and doing burnouts.This reporter is on Twitter: @KarlaPincott 

Ken Block makes do with a specially-built Ford Fiesta Gymkhana thrash machine for his video ventures, but the anonymous souls at Tax The Rich like to create their sideways sequences using museum-grade thoroughbred supercars or ultra-luxury machines.Over the past 18 months we’ve seen a Ferrari 288 GTO, Bugatti EB110 SS, Rolls Royce Phantom, twin Ferrari F50s, a Ferrari Enzo, and a Jaguar XJ220 thrashed mercilessly around their agricultural playground, to the chagrin of supercar fanciers and the guilty pleasure of everyone else.For their latest and tenth instalment, the mega-dollar 288 GTO returns to the Tax The Rich farm, where they put it through the usual opposite-lock action across mud, gravel and tarmac, all to the tune of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.The 288 GTO was developed for Group B rallying, but never raced due to the disbanding of the category, and the 272 road cars are now worth serious money. Perfect for the Tax The Rich treatment then!The highlight this time are the slo-mo figure-eights the GTO executes within the tight confines of a hay shed, with its composite body slewing sideways just inches from brick walls.And as with recent entries, it looks like there’s a clue to the subject of the next Tax The Rich instalment, with what looks to be a prototype Ferrari F40 (chassis 74047 as seen below) appearing through smoke at the end of the film. If so, it will be the most precious to be pummelled yet.While the identities of the Tax The Rich progenitors officially remain a mystery, the elaborate gates shown in the Phantom film just happen to signify the entrance to Heveningham Hall, a palatial 25 bedroom manor that makes Downton Abbey look like an outhouse, set in 460 acres of lush Suffolk farmland. Significantly, Heveningham Hall is owned by real-estate magnate Jon Hunt, and his rally driver son Harry…This reporter is on Twitter: @Mal_Flynn Watch the desktop version of the Tax The Rich Ferrari 288 GTO video here.  

No, this isn't another of those hoaxes showing a supposedly diamond-covered car owned by a Middle-East sheik -- which always turn out to be a crystal covered show car created for a US customisation house.These are real diamonds, and the car has been built by Rolls-Royce's in-house special options team. The one-off edition Celestial Phantom was unveiled overnight at Dubai international motor show with a whole new level of bling.The skilled handcrafting team in Rolls-Royce's Bespoke department have set 446 jewelry-grade diamonds in the Phantom's doors, centre console and rear seat privacy divider -- proving there is probably no limit to what can be ordered from Rolls-Royce as a personal modification.Like other Rolls-Royces, the Celestial Phantom has the option of a 'starlight headliner' -- an inner roof set with more than 1000 fibre optic lights to mimic the night sky. But on the Dubai show car, the headliner is a precise sky map of the exact positions of those stars as seen over the brand's British headquarters on January 1, 2003: the date the first Celestial Phantom was handed over to its new owner.Rolls-Royce worked with a UK planetarium to map out the roof, guaranteed to be as astronomically correct as the car's price is guaranteed to be astronomically high. They're not revealing the price tag, but the car is likely to go into a serious collector's garage.This reporter is on Twitter: @KarlaPincott  

The Rolls-Royce brand manager in Dubai, Mohammed El-Arishy, has ordered a very special edition from his company's customisation arm, Rolls-Royce Bespoke. Called the Chicane Phantom Coupe, the one-off is a tribute to the Goodwood Circuit near the storied brand's British HQ.To salute the race venue, the Phantom's wood-trimmed interior has been ditched in favour of ultra-modern carbon-fibre, a chequered flag has been embroidered into the seating, and a metal plaque featuring the Goodwood track map installed.Exterior accents have been finished in matte black, and the bodywork painted a gunmetal grey with matching wheels -- the first time they've been painted on a modern Roller.“I wanted to create a motor car that captures the unique atmosphere and history of the Goodwood Motor Circuit,” El-Arishy said. And we have to admit that while we've seen a lot of garish bespoke work on Rolls-Royces -- some of it from El-Arishy's home in the United Arab Emirates capital -- his creation is restrained and tasteful, if a departure from normal fit-out.This reporter is on Twitter: @KarlaPincott 

Company founder Sir Henry Royce aimed to "strive for perfection in everything you do" but problems happen even to the best of them - Rolls Royce has issued two recalls on its Ghost and million-dollar Phantom.The BMW-owned British marque is investigating a fault with the Ghost's turbocharger cooling system on its 6.6-litre twin-turbo V12 engine, as well as the Phantom's hydraulic fault within the braking system.The company issued a recall on the Ghost Sedan over fire risks if "the turbo cooling pump cracks, the pump electronics may smoulder, possibly causing an engine compartment fire or a vehicle fire," the notice said. The recall covers Ghosts available for sale between September 1, 2009 and June 30, 2011.Rolls-Royce Asia-Pacific aftersales general manager Carl Whipp said in a letter to customers said vehicles may be affected by an auxiliary water pump failure within the turbocharger cooling system. "In extreme cases this could lead to overheating, posing a potential fire risk," the letter to customers said.The bastion of British motoring has also recalled the Phantom - in sedan, coupe and convertible forms - sold between January 1, 2009 and November 30, 2009, over concerns oil can get into the brake booster. In a letter to owners, Rolls-Royce aftersales general manager Michael Dedekind told Phantom owners a potential oil leak in the braking system and reduce of braking assistance."Mechanical braking is still available to slow and stop the vehicle and there have been no reported incidents among Rolls-Royce owners. "Furthermore, as this issue relates to older vehicles with a high mileage, we believe it is highly unlikely that Rolls-Royce customers will be affected," the letter says.The recall numbers are only a handful as the company's Australian volumes are not considered high - the brand's total sales for 2012 so far is 4 and just 20 Rolls-Royce cars were sold last year.In fact, over the last 10 years only 124 Rolls-Royce cars were sold in Australia - but that's no surprise, given the Ghost starts at $645,000 and the Phantom's asking price starts at just over $1-million. 

... rival the prices on the BMW options' list for things like salad and spuds.So it's no surprise that the top end of town calls the shots at the Palexpo alongside Geneva Airport as Europe's carmakers go head-to-head for the first time in 2012. Ferrari and Lamborghini battle for go-faster bragging rights as Rolls-Royce and Bentley get serious about family motoring for the ultra-rich, while Infiniti pitches an new exotic coupe and even Ssangyong of Korea goes upmarket with a new concept. There are also dozens of one-off dream machines and hotrod tuner cars in Geneva, a show that is traditionally dominated by European design stars including Pininfarina and Giugiaro. But there is plenty, too, for ordinary car buyers as the Fiesta ST brakes cover, Hyundai updates the i20 and teases with the Veloster Turbo, Jaguar confirms an XF station wagon, Audi and Mercedes-Benz previews their A3 and A-Class, and Ford even updates its box-boring Transit workhorse. Picking the best of the best is tough with so much gorgeous stuff on the stands, but Alfa Romeo is the winner for 2012 and edges out the Infiniti Emerge-E with its Disco Volante.The pretty little red coupe is dreamy without being stupid and is already confirmed for production, although the slightly-retro body will be draped over Alfa's existing 8C Competizione chassis - 4.7-litre V8, 335kW, 0-100km/h in 4.2 seconds - which means it's no chance for Australia with only left-hand drive.The Ferrari F12 is exactly what you expect from the fastest car to wear the badge - 340km/h and 0-100km/h in 3.1 seconds - including a swoopy body that taps the past as well as the influences that created the California convertible, but Lamborghini goes even better with an Aventador J preview car that is snapped up for a rumoured $2.8 million ahead of genuine production of an open-topped Aventador supercar.Rolls-Royce updates the Phantom with a new nose that still demands respect, as well as tweaking its colour choices with a two-tone approach that triggers memories of cheap seventies vinyl roofs, and Jaguar gets serious for families with an XF Sportbrake that will still struggle in a world of SUVs.Further down the food chain, the Audi A3 looks good but not as edgy as an A-Class that must break away from the bus pass generation into something closer to the Y-Gen futurists, and Volkswagen previews a more car-like Tiguan crossover with its Cross Coupe.Hyundai has a preview of a new flagship coupe called the i-oniq - did it mean ironic? - Kia shows a Track'ster that will become the new Soul, Honda shows the CR-V design that's coming to Australia, and the pocket rocket Ford Fiesta ST breaks cover with a confirmation for Australia.The action and excitement at Geneva goes on and on, and that is - really - the best thing about the show. Detroit in January hinted that the word's carmakers are finally emerging from the austerity and fear of the global financial crisis and the big-spending effort in Geneva confirms it, with good news for almost everyone from Euro billionaires to ordinary Aussie families.PG PICKS:1. Bentley EXP 9 F.Only one word fits - Ugly. With a big capital U. The hulking British bulldog might tick the boxes for cashed-up families, but this SUV makes a LandCruiser look elegant, and subtle.2. Giugiaro Brivido.Exactly what you expect to see in Geneva, as designers go all-out to impress the crowds - and each other. Not for production but a great looker with huge gullwing doors.3. Range Rover Evoque Convertible. A certainty for production as Land Rover milks its most successful design - ever. This one will never go bush but is being fast tracked for Double Bay and Toorak.4. Ssangyong XIV-2. Who knew the South Koreans could trump the Euros with a design that combines SUV practicality with a coupe-convertible body? A big surprise.5. Toyota FT-Bh: Just when you thought the uglies were done, Toyota lobbed with this. If it's the future for hybrid cars then sales will be slow. Very slow.