Rolls-Royce Phantom Series II

The eighth-gen Rolls-Royce Phantom is the second of the company's modern era. Is it still a world-beater? Change is a concept to be treated carefully when it comes to cars such as the Rolls-Royce Phantom.Some of it is unavoidable as part of any mid-life-cycle update such as this super-luxury limousine has just been through. But too much of it can look like experimentation; a tacit admission, perhaps, that Goodwood could have done better with the second-generation car, which it launched to the world in 2017, and which went under Autocar's road test scrutiny the year after. And when the car in question represents the pinnacle of everything that a company like Rolls-Royce can achieve, an admission like that would never do.So this Phantom 'Series II' keeps its changes fairly small. If you've got an eye for detail and know the 2017 car well, you might just spot the external ones. If you're looking at a car in just the right specification, meanwhile, you'll certainly notice the main interior ones. But most important is what's been retained about this world-renowned symbol of unsurpassed wealth and status; what it says about its owner.Goodwood’s self-proclaimed ‘best car in the world’ was, in its previous generation, the car with which Rolls-Royce revealed the full size and scope of its ambition under BMW Group ownership in 2003. And it was a limousine unlike any other the world had seen.This is the eighth generation of the Phantom in Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ history, though they haven’t always run concurrently. The current car brought with it an all-new platform in 2017 that, it was claimed, made Rolls-Royce unique as a super-luxury car maker.It’s a platform ready to accept the electrified powertrain technologies of the near future and will go on to serve as the basis of every Rolls-Royce model to come. That means it will sever the most important material link between some of Goodwood's recent previous models and other BMW Group cars, a link that has been used as a stick with which to beat Rolls-Royce in recent years.If the outgoing Phantom was the company’s ‘renaissance car’, this one could be just as significant for what’s underneath it and for what it’s capable of. The Phantom has stood relatively unchallenged at the top of our super-luxury vehicle class for as long as that class has formally existed, combining unmatched extravagance and grandness with supreme comfort and refinement, remarkable drivability and incredible sense of occasion.It’s time to reveal, then, exactly how groundbreaking this 2.8-tonne, 5.8m, hand-built symbol of wealth and status really is, assessed on city roads and across country; both on the motorway and in the motorway service station car park; and measured in objective terms by satellite timing gear and – perhaps even more important – by the decibel.