Oct 23, 2017 AFL: After the trade period wrapped up last week the next big event on the AFL calendar is now the draft, which will be held a little over a month from now. There are many attractions to being a billionaire. You could open a private zoo, commission statues depicting yourself as various historical figures striking heroic poses, or—if you want to go full Blofeld—hollow out your private island to hide a moon-melting death ray. Alternatively, you could forget such fripperies and just buy. You don’t need to be an actual billionaire to afford one, but you do need to be somewhere toward the top of the 1 percent. Rolls-Royce CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös says that owners will almost exclusively be ultra-high-net-worth individuals, those with more than $30 million in cash and liquid assets. While the standard Phantom won’t be priced significantly above the outgoing version—figure around $450,000—it will be possible to more than double that through the sort of personalization that Rolls encourages its buyers to indulge in, such as installing commissioned art in the dashboard or color-matching the exterior to the exact shade of the sunset behind your beach house in the Maldives. This is a car for people who don’t care what it costs. The Architecture of Luxury The first Rolls-Royce Phantom was produced as long ago as 1925, and the company claims that the nameplate is the longest-serving in the automotive industry. While that’s true, there have been long gaps between some of the earlier generations. Regardless, (we’re asked to refer to it as Phantom VIII in the style of a monarch or a Star Wars sequel) directly replaces the 2003-era Phantom VII, which was the first Rolls-Royce developed under BMW ownership. The Phantom VIII is the first car to sit on Rolls-Royce’s new aluminum spaceframe platform, officially known as the Architecture of Luxury, which will underpin all future models including. The exterior design has undergone a less revolutionary transformation when compared with the outgoing model, gaining more curves and a radiator grille that integrates into the front of the car better than the last Phantom’s freestanding chrome Parthenon. But despite some modest reduction in exterior dimensions, the Phantom VIII has lost none of the VII’s ability to shock and awe, especially in some of the snazzy two-tone paint finishes that Rolls-Royce chose for the cars used for the media launch in Switzerland. Courtesy Extended As you’d expect, our Phantom experience began in the back seat of an extended-wheelbase model. While Müller-Ötvös says that eight out of 10 Phantom owners will drive themselves at least occasionally, and that U.S. Buyers are the most likely to take the wheel, the extended-wheelbase (EWB) model—8.6 inches longer than the regular car—probably will be piloted by a chauffeur. And not a robotic one, either. Ingress is still made through a rear-hinged “coach door” in Rolls-speak—the unpleasant connotations of the more usual “suicide” reference thus being deftly avoided—and the rear cabin is every bit as special as you’d expect. The carpet pile is ankle deep, the adjustable seats offer a variety of massages, and there’s a refrigerator mounted in the center console complete with a clip-in decanter. Sadly, the last item proved empty during our ride. The interior feels very traditional, with a predictable abundance of wood and leather and old-fashioned rotary heating controls rather than digital displays: red for hotter, blue for colder. But there’s plenty of well-disguised 21st-century tech, too—apparently one of the key demands from buyers of the old car.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2019
Categories |