This Press Kit gives an outline of the present Ghost mannequin household, its design philosophy and place throughout the Rolls-Royce product portfolio. The unique launch launch for Ghost is offered on PressMembership, the place you may as well discover details about earlier generations, variants and fashions, together with Ghost Extended and Black Badge Ghost .
BACKGROUND
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars launched the primary Ghost in 2009 on the Frankfurt Motor Show. More compact than the marque’s pinnacle product, Phantom, it was created for a brand new group of purchasers who desired a extra modest, minimalist expression of Rolls-Royce perfection in design, engineering and craftsmanship. The Ghost Extended variant adopted in 2011. An up to date Series II Ghost was unveiled on the 2014 Geneva Motor Show, with the primary Black Badge Ghost making its debut two years later.
Over the course of its 10-year lifecycle, the first-generation Ghost grew to become probably the most profitable product within the firm’s historical past, enabling Rolls-Royce to scale up manufacturing, put money into its capabilities and set up itself as a really world luxurious model. Production led to 2019, an occasion commemorated within the Ghost Zenith Collection.
The current Ghost, constructed on the identical Architecture of Luxury spaceframe as Phantom, Cullinan and Spectre, was launched in 2020: the line-up additionally consists of Ghost Extended and Black Badge Ghost, launched in 2021.
GHOST PHILOSOPHY AND POSITIONING
Ghost is a examine in discount, minimalism and ease. Its purity gives the best clean canvas for Bespoke commissions, with purchasers in a position to train their formidable creativity and categorical their preferences nearly completely freed from technical and aesthetic constraints.
That purity presents chance. It creates potential as boundless because the proprietor’s creativeness, emboldening them to convey color, power and vibrancy to their fee and to permit stunning supplies, skilled craftsmanship and beautiful particulars converse for themselves, delicate and unadorned.
A NEW APPROACH TO LUXURY
Ghost’s design displays a marked shift in purchasers’ attitudes to luxurious that has occurred since its first incarnation. Today’s luxurious shoppers consciously reject extravagance and ostentation: their tastes are outlined by discount, simplicity and substance, and the clever, thought-about choice and unobtrusive software of remarkable supplies and craftsmanship. Every ingredient of Ghost subsequently has relevance, goal and integrity. This philosophy is the antithesis of ‘premium mediocrity’, a time period coined by the style business for in any other case unremarkable merchandise that depend on contrivance, superficial particulars and meaningless aesthetic artifice to create an phantasm of luxurious.
Ghost can also be designed for a youthful shopper cohort, typically self-made and invariably self-confident and self-reliant, who are typically self-drivers by default, and thus take a eager curiosity of their motor automotive’s driving expertise and dynamics.
THE CURRENT GHOST MODEL
Ghost is ideal in its simplicity; however creating this purity of expression was one of many marque’s greatest-ever technical challenges. It incorporates state-of-the-art tools and features together with:
- LED and laser headlights with greater than 600m of illuminated vary, plus imaginative and prescient help
- Alertness assistant
- Four-camera system with panoramic view, all-round visibility and helicopter view
- Active cruise management
- Collision, cross-traffic, lane departure and lane change warnings
- Industry-leading 7×3 high-resolution head-up show (HUD)
- On-board Wi-Fi hotspot
- Self-park system
- Bespoke navigation and leisure techniques.
ENGINEERING
Proprietary Architecture of Luxury
Ghost is constructed on the marque’s proprietary Architecture of Luxury spaceframe, as utilized in its flagship Phantom, Cullinan SUV and all-electric Spectre. The aluminium spaceframe’s flexibility and scalability creates an acoustically superior, extremely inflexible and dynamic platform, based mostly round 4 mounted factors, one at every nook of the motor automotive. The moveable aluminium bulkhead, ground, crossmembers and sill panels are positioned particularly to make Ghost as gratifying to drive as it’s to be pushed in. Pushing two of the solid suspension mounting assemblies to the very entrance and inserting the 6.75-litre V12 behind the entrance axle, provides an optimum 50/50 weight distribution.
Ghost has all-wheel drive, all-wheel steering and a Planar Suspension System particularly designed to reinforce the marque’s hallmark ‘magic carpet ride’.
All-aluminium bodyshell
Ghost’s metallic superstructure is 100% aluminium, rendered as one clear, expansive piece, flowing seamlessly from the A-pillar, over the roof and right down to the rear of the motor automotive. To eradicate shut strains and physique seams, 4 craftspeople hand-weld the physique collectively concurrently; Ghost can also be fitted with 100% aluminium, laser-welded doorways. As properly as lowering the motor automotive’s total weight, aluminium provides a exceptional 40,000Nm/deg stiffness, and a decrease acoustic impedance than metal, bettering cabin atmosphere.
6.75-Litre Twin-Turbocharged V12
Ghost’s bespoke V12 engine ensures dynamic efficiency, delivering 563bhp/420kW and 850Nm/627lb ft of torque, with most torque accessible from 1600rpm – simply 600rpm above tick-over. The air consumption system incorporates massive ports designed to cut back engine noise within the inside.
Planar Suspension System
The Planar Suspension System is the results of 10 collective years of testing and growth, creating a way of ‘flight on land’ by no means achieved in a motor automotive earlier than. Created via bodily engineering developments, and complex scanning and software program expertise, it incorporates a world-first Upper Wishbone Damper unit, reserved completely for Rolls-Royce and by no means beforehand utilized in a manufacturing motor automotive. Located above the entrance suspension meeting, this assists the constantly variable, electronically managed shock absorbers and self-levelling high-volume air strut assemblies, making a secure, easy experience.
The marque’s Flagbearer system makes use of cameras to learn the street forward and modify the suspension proactively relatively than reactively at as much as 100km/h. This permits Ghost to anticipate and react to probably the most demanding street surfaces. It operates in live performance with the Satellite Aided Transmission system, which pulls GPS information to pre-select the optimum gear for upcoming corners, all managed by the planar software program system.
The five-link rear axle advantages from self-levelling high-volume air suspension expertise and rear-wheel steering.
Effortless Doors
Rolls-Royce purchasers have loved self-closing doorways because the first Goodwood Phantom. In Ghost, purchasers open the rear door with one pull of the inside deal with, then permit it to return to its resting place whereas they test for potential hazards. They then pull and maintain it for full energy help on opening. Once the door is opened sufficiently, they merely launch the deal with, which engages a door brake. The door might be closed fully robotically on the push of a button on the outside deal with.
If purchasers want to shut the door manually, the operation is energy assisted. On-board longitudinal and transverse sensors, in addition to G-force sensors fitted to every door, permit the identical velocity of operation no matter hill or driveway angles.
Micro-Environment Purification System (MEPS)
Ghost advantages from a Micro-Environment Purification System (MEPS), incorporating a full suite of {hardware} and software program. They embody extremely delicate Impurity Detection Sensors that robotically change recent air intakes to Recirculation Mode if unacceptable ranges of airborne contaminants are current. This channels all cabin air via a nanofleece filter, which is able to eradicating almost all ultra-fine particles from the Rolls-Royce’s micro-environment in lower than two minutes.
ACOUSTICS
Ghost applies the marque’s Formula for Serenity, designed to supply a peaceful, serene and near-noiseless inside setting.
The first ingredient of this components is the Architecture of Luxury. Its aluminium development has the next acoustic impedance than metal, and contains advanced varieties, relatively than flat, resonant surfaces. The bulkhead and ground sections are double-skinned and stuffed with composite damping felts to cut back street noise intrusion. In whole, Ghost incorporates 100kg of acoustic materials within the doorways, roof, between the double-glazed home windows, contained in the tyres and all through the underpinning structure.
During growth, each element was interrogated and, the place essential, re-engineered to eradicate unacceptable noise. For instance, the within of the air con ducting is polished to cut back wind noise; the diameter of the prop shaft was adjusted and its rigidity elevated to enhance acoustics.
The growth course of additionally revealed {that a} fully silent inside is definitely relatively disorienting for occupants. Ghost subsequently displays a ‘whisper’ – a mushy undertone skilled as a single, delicate be aware. This is achieved by tuning every element so it shares a standard resonant frequency. Again, this requires particular engineering options, corresponding to damping items within the seat frames, and ports beneath the rear parcel shelf that permit low-frequency sounds produced within the 507-litre boot cavity at motorway velocity to flee.
EXTERIOR
Ghost is outlined by minimalism and purity, underpinned by nice substance. Sharp bow strains intersect with an angular gentle signature, creating an assertive but stunning entrance finish. Twenty LEDS set beneath the highest of the radiator grille subtly illuminate the vanes: the backs of the vanes are brushed, making them much less reflective and making a restrained glow impact. The Spirit of Ecstasy will not be surrounded by panel strains however relatively stands inside her personal unbroken ‘lake’.
The hand-welded aluminium physique seems as one fluid complete, uninterrupted by shut strains, with a single straight stroke within the flanks emphasising the motor automotive’s size. The decrease ‘waft line’ borrows from boat design and makes use of reflection to lighten the surfacing and create a pure sense of movement. The subtly arched roof line and rear finish observe this sense of motion and resolve in a taper. The near-square rear gentle graphic, a longtime tenet of latest Rolls-Royce design, has a slight ahead tilt and seems as an ‘island’ throughout the painted floor.
In the intentionally impartial higher part, the home windows are equally proportioned, balancing Ghost as each a driver-oriented and chauffeur-driven automotive.
INTERIOR
The inside aesthetic pursues the identical minimalist rules as the outside. Free of busy particulars and superficial adornment, it creates a soothing refuge and maximises the influence of Bespoke color personalisation.
Producing an setting outlined by discount, simplicity and magnificence is an especially advanced endeavour, since even the very most interesting supplies will, when left unembellished, invite shut scrutiny. The leather-based utilized in every of Ghost’s 338 particular person panels, nonetheless small and unobtrusive, is topic to the automotive business’s most exhaustive high quality management checks: the stitching is minimal and varieties lengthy, completely straight strains, once more inviting minute inspection.
Ghost options specifically developed wooden veneers in open-pore end, which showcase the supplies of their bare type. Obsidian Ayous is impressed by the wealthy combine of colors present in igneous rock, whereas Dark Amber introduces delicate glamour with fantastic aluminium particles built-in into the darkish wooden. The wooden is left uncovered as lengthy, single-veneer leaves, punctuated solely by cold-to-the-touch strong metallic air vents.
BESPOKE FEATURES
Illuminated Fascia
Ghost’s Illuminated Fascia subtly echoes the Starlight Headliner, which itself has turn into as a lot part of Rolls-Royce iconography because the Spirit of Ecstasy, Pantheon Grille and ‘Double R’ monogram.
Developed over two years and greater than 10,000 collective hours, the fascia consists of an ethereal glowing Ghost nameplate surrounded by greater than 850 ‘stars’. The illumination comes from 152 LEDs mounted above and beneath the fascia, every meticulously colour-matched to the clock and instrument dial lighting. The Ghost wordmark is lit by a 2mm thick gentle information, that includes greater than 90,000 laser-etched dots throughout the floor. This not solely disperses the sunshine evenly however creates a twinkling impact as the attention strikes throughout the fascia.
Located on the passenger facet of the dashboard, the constellation and wordmark are fully invisible when the inside lights are usually not in operation. This is achieved utilizing three layers of composite supplies. The first, a piano-black substrate, is laser-etched to permit gentle to shine via the wordmark and star cluster. This is overlaid with a layer of dark-tinted lacquer, hiding the lettering when not in use. Finally, the fascia is sealed with a layer of subtly tinted lacquer earlier than being hand polished to attain a wonderfully uniform, 0.5mm thick high-gloss end, matching different high-gloss accents integrated into the inside.
Bespoke Audio
As properly as making a serene inner setting, Rolls-Royce’s pursuit of acoustic perfection creates an impressive sound stage for Ghost’s Bespoke Audio system, which is engineered into the motor automotive’s very material. A resonance chamber into the physique’s sill part basically transforms the motor automotive right into a subwoofer: exciter audio system bonded to the Starlight Headliner flip the ceiling right into a single massive speaker. A robust 1300W amplifier drives 18 particular person loudspeakers: state-of-the-art optimisation expertise and high-precision magnesium-ceramic compound cones present excellent frequency response. Two lively microphones detect anomalous frequencies, then set off the amplifiers to counteract them, ensuing a pure and completely balanced listening expertise.
PERFECTION, EVOLVED
The solely elements within the present Ghost mannequin to be carried over from its predecessor are the Spirit of Ecstasy mascot and the beloved umbrellas hid within the doorways: all the pieces else was designed, crafted and engineered from the bottom up. It distils the Rolls-Royce model values into a good looking, minimalist, but extremely advanced product that’s completely in concord with purchasers’ evolving wants, and exactly in tune with the occasions.
Chris Davies/SlashGear
