2021 Rolls Royce Ghost Review
“...the Ghost doesn’t bludgeon you with power…it’s encompasses your entire being! You feel the torque being sequenced into your DNA as you apply the throttle...”
2021 Rolls Royce Ghost
Price as tested: $464,500
Specs: 6 & 3/4 Liter Twin Turbo V12
573 HP and all the TQ physics can muster
MPG: If you can afford the car…you can afford the gas
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Guy who did stuff: Yousef Alvi
Video: Rolls Royce Media and myself
The old Ghost was a grand vehicle but suffered an issue that most of its clientele could not overlook…it’s bones (as exquisite as they were) were based on the BMW 7 Series. Which, obviously, is not a horrid platform to begin with but if one is paying over a quarter million dollars for a vehicle…you want it to be bespoke, special and unique.
“if one is paying over a quarter million dollars for a vehicle…you want it to be bespoke, special and unique.”
That bespoke ideal is what sets Rolls Royce apart from the rest of automotivedom. The sense that the vehicle you have chosen is crafted by masters just for you and no one else. Building a Rolls Royce on a platform shared with a BMW, flies in the face of that ideal. No matter how much Rolls Royce attempted to smother the BMWness of that platform…it leaked through.
So when it came time for Rolls Royce to design the new Ghost, they pulled in their client base and listened. Listened! Instead of assuming what people want (looking at you other OEMs) and then ramming that product down people’s throats, Rolls Royce gathered their flock and engineered a vehicle from their feedback. The end result is a vehicle that is like no other on the road today. A vehicle that combines the history of Rolls Royce along with its future in one sculpted body. That is what brought us this new Rolls Royce Ghost.
“Instead of just assuming what people want (looking at you other OEMs) and then ramming that product down people’s throats, Rolls Royce gathered their flock and engineered a vehicle from their feedback. ”
This new Ghost rides on a platform called the Architecture of Luxury, which is an in-house modular platform developed for the Cullinan and the Phantom. So instead of going downmarket like the previous generation Ghost, this new generation went straight to the top! This AoL platform was engineered from the onset with Rolls Royce’s obsessiveness with ride quality and noise reduction in mind.
Their engineers actually didn’t just reduce noise and vibrations in their first prototype model…they pretty much eliminated it! So much in fact, that when they had a group of clients test out their prototype Ghost, the feedback they received was summed up in one word: ‘unsettling’
The cabin they created was indeed so quiet and so free of vibration that it became a rolling sensory deprivation chamber. Which, in theory, sounds great! Who doesn’t want to be noise and vibration free in their luxury vehicle? Well, truth be told…no one and that’s because human beings need noise and vibrations. We are accustomed to noise in our lives. Whether it be the hum of the road underneath while driving to the sound of your feet on the pavement, noise is part of our existence. To eliminate a vast majority of that is akin to being alone with just the sound of your breath…great for a few minutes…but may cause you to go mad after a few more.
So, Rolls Royce’s engineers went back to work and this time actually engineered noise and vibration INTO the cabin. Let me state that one more time:
“Rolls Royce did such a good job on the new Ghost that they had to engineer noise BACK INTO the cabin”
Their engineer’s set forth creating a cabin as, for lack of a better term, a rolling ‘sound chamber’ to ensure the perfect amount of noise and vibrations are channeled to it’s occupant’s. From sculpting the trunk to find the optimal resonance to ensuring the driveshaft spins ever-so-perfectly to create the ideal vibration…nothing was left to chance and my God it shows! All of that is even before we talk about the suspension!
The suspension of the Ghost was completely re engineered for this new model. Instead of having one damper it has two dampers for each front wheel. So you have a damper for the uhhh damper. The dual damper system ensures the Ghost never runs out of compression and is able to absorb any impact. Add the dual damper system to the Magic Carpet Camera System, which actively scans the road ahead to make adjustments to the suspension before any impacts happen…all of that making it so even the world’s most unruly surfaces are utterly placated into submission by the Ghost.
So now you are probably thinking…’‘well it probably rides like a boat then right?’ Nope. The Ghost, as perfectly described by it’s chief engineer Jonathan Simms: ‘‘Gives the feeling of flight’’. Which is the best description I can give as well, because instead of gurgling up bumps, imperfections and bends in the road and in turn delivering an undulating and wavy ride…the Ghost assimilates those imperfections into it’s chassis and delivers the appropriate amount of feedback to its occupants. So in other words, you are not completely cut off from the outside world in this new Ghost but instead its clarified, refined and polished before it is presented.
“…the Ghost assimilates those imperfections into it’s chassis and delivers the appropriate amount of feedback to its occupants. So in other words, you are not completely cut off from the outside world in this new Ghost but instead its clarified, refined and polished before it is presented.”
Now, it’s not all about ride quality with this Ghost. The drivetrain is from the heavens as well. The 6.75 Liter Twin Turbo V12 is such a work of mechanical art it’s divine. It’s distantly rumbly when it needs to be but whisper quiet most of the time. There are absolutely no vibrations to inform you have anything uncivilized like moving cylinders, exploding gas and valves…just a ‘Power Meter’ informing you that a mountain of torque is available to smother you at a moment’s notice.
When you give that notice, the Ghost doesn’t really accelerate like a normal vehicle. It can be best described as watching the USS Enterprise go into warp. Your foot goes to the floor, which ‘engages’ the engine and you quite literally feel the vehicle stretch, like the Enterprise, before it is SLUNG into the next zip code! In a intoxicatingly, hilariously, marvelously smooth lightning like fashion! In other words, the Ghost doesn’t bludgeon you with power…it’s encompasses your entire being! You feel the torque being sequenced into your DNA as you apply the throttle. It’s absolutely jaw dropping!
So how do I sum up the 2021 Rolls Royce Ghost? Well, let me tell you about the following image:
What you see above you is the Rolls Royce Ghost nameplate on the passenger side dash. That piece took Rolls Royce two years, 10,000 hours to engineer! It is made up of 150 individual LEDs, 850 stars, 90,000 laser etched dots. 3 layers of lacquer and a 2mm thick light bar to evenly distribute the light across the panel. The end result? This nameplate shimmers like a sea of diamonds at night that is unlike anything I have ever seen.
That is Rolls Royce people. That is the Rolls Royce Ghost.
