► Rolls-Royce Ghost updated with new Series II
► Subtle exterior design changes and tech upgrades
► It’s all about the personalisation
Hallowe’en comes early for millionaires. While the rest of us have to wait to the end of the month to get our ghoul on, Rolls-Royce has just unveiled the facelifted version of its junior limo/GT, the Ghost, which was new in 2020.
Like the recently facelifted Cullinan SUV, the Series II version of the £300k-ish Ghost keeps the fundamentals largely unchanged but makes a few small but significant design changes, and brings a major – but largely invisible – tech upgrade.
And as with the Cullinan, the Black Badge version of the Ghost will be available straight away, Black Badge being the slightly more powerful version with slightly more black trim.
The four-door body is still all-aluminum, the air suspension is still adaptive, the 6.75-litre twin-turbo V12 still drives all four wheels and there’s still all-wheel steering.
There’s now an extra emphasis from Rolls-Royce on getting customers involved early on in the details of the car’s specification and finish, with a huge variety of choices for paintwork and interior lightshows, and options such as champagne coolers. CAR has been privy to that whole experience once before, designing our own Ghost that made production.
Rolls-Royce has recently been granted planning permission for an extension of its plant at Goodwood, which will make room for a new paintshop and other facilities for personalising your Roller… for a price.
With so much of the Ghost unchanged, best to just highlight some of the changes.
1. The grille
The Rolls-Royce approach to innovation often involves leaning into its traditions. So with the Ghost Series II, the biggest visible change is to the Pantheon grille. ‘Change’ is relative when it comes to that grille, which has been used on Rolls-Royce cars in subtly evolving forms for more than a century, having been originally inspired by ancient Rome.
On the Ghost the grille is illuminated, and framed by new headlights and daytime running lights, and there are new chrome embellishments that from some angles give the illusion that the Spirit of Exstasy figure is floating.
The Black Badge (the white car in our photos) gets its own style of air intake, with black chrome frames, and the grille itself is darker.
2. The rear end
The tail lights, derived from those on the electric Spectre, tidy up the Ghost’s back end. There are two main light panels in each unit, linked by a new decorative chrome element, or black chrome in the case of the Black Badge.
They’re now very different from the Phantom’s more blocky rear lights, which don’t curl around the side of the car so much.
3. The wheels
There’s a choice of 22-inch wheel styles, both with nine spokes. One is fully polished, the other part-polished.
On the Black Badge there are seven-spoke, part-polished, 22-inch wheels, giving a better view of the huge brakes.
4. The dash
A glass panel spans the whole dash, from pillar to pillar, with the ‘Spirit’ operating system focused on the central touchscreen. It’s a system adapted from BMW’s iDrive, and is much more modern than it looks if what you first notice is the strong attachment to physical knobs and switches throughout the cabin.
Passengers in the back can now connect up to two streaming devices. The rear screens host a new interface that lets passengers manage functions including massaging and cooling.
There’s also a new 1400-watt amplifier feeding the 18-speaker audio set-up, with the otpion of making the headliner part of the sound system.
Like the Cullinan, the Ghost now also has an elaborately illuminated Spirit of Ecstasy clock cabinet in the dash; black chrome is used for the figurine in the Black Badge.
5. The upholstery
Huge choices for interior finish now include the option of non-leather upholstery. Duality Twill, a bamboo-based fabric, debuted in the Cullinan. It’s available in a modest-sounding three colours – but with a choice of 51 different colours for the thread.