Test Drive Rolls Royce Phantom since 2003 Sedan

All photos Rolls Royce Phantom since 2003

Strict compliance

Going to a meeting with such a legend, what kind of Rolls-Royce had always had for us, keeping careless tone somehow with difficulty it turns out. And the phantom justified the expectations of one hundred percent. We have not met a more gorgeous car.

Opening at the beginning of the century, the company Rolls-Royce Ltd., Businessman Charles Stewart Rolls and Engineer Henry Royce determined its specificity as follows: Creating cars extremely high quality. The ideology of the brand remained unchanged, even despite the repeated change of her owners, and Rolls Royce today is the same symbol of luxury and prestige, which was all previous hundred years.

The proposal to test the Rolls-Royce Phantom, the first car of this brand, almost fully created in the BMW design bureau, did not find us surprise. Information that at the beginning of Spring to St. Petersburg will bring the legendary limousine in order to become the legendary limousine in the year, appeared in the editorial office of the wheels in early January. And yet we went to meet him with a feeling that could be called peaceful trepidation. The case was not even in the value of the phantom, although the prospect is to ride the car worth more than 500 thousand euros capable of weighing the most endless. Simply, going to a meeting with such a legend, what kind of Rolls-Royce had always been for us, keeping careless tone somehow with difficulty it turns out. And the phantom justified the expectations of one hundred percent. We have not met a more gorgeous car.

friendship of Peoples
Contrary to the problem, according to which the Rolls-Royce transition under full control of the BMW concern was the fall of the last Oklota of the British automotive industry, the Bavarians took the Rolls-Royus production relay, and in another German company Volkswagen, which produced the car at the CRA Cheshire. Now VAG produces the machine at this factory another British brand purchased to them.

The BMW management approached the continuation of the kind of gorgeous limousine with a maximum seriousness. In English Earth, in Goodwood, in less than a year, the plant was built, which cost BMW about 100 million euros. The plant covers an area of \u200b\u200babout 33 thousand square meters and produces about a thousand Rolls-Royce per year, and only 40% of the edition of the largest state in the number of purchased are now the German Rolls remains for exports. It works at the factory a little more than 350 people, and the main reason for such a small number of personnel is hidden in a rather curious fact. The fact is that in England, the phantom is only collected, paint and make the interior. Body, engine and gearbox, as well as the whole suspension come from Germany. Of course, in order to save, the Germans could collect Phantom in the Munich Technical Center, but in this case the Romene of the British Patriarch would be an irreparable damage, and this could lead to huge losses. After all, Paphos Rolls-Royce is precisely in his image. Well, in appearance, naturally.

Exterior is not the main thing
The history of the creation of German Rolls is too similar to the scenario of the Hollywood film to be true, but supervised the project chief designer BMW Chris Bangl. He scored an international team out of five professional automotive stylists: the appearance of Phantom was charged with British, American and Japanese, the interior of the Englishman and the American. A special design studio was bought, and not somewhere in Stuttgart or Aachen, but in the center of London, in the building of the former bank on Baywooter Road. To immerse artists and designers into the atmosphere of real English traditions, they were taken to traditional jumps in Ascot and the rowing regatta in Henley, they arranged excursions to them through the streets of the London Quarter Meimer and Alleas Hyde Park.

As it turned out, all this was not in vain! Bangle offered the leadership five absolutely different design options, of which preference was given to the most conservative, made in monumental architectural style. The car was truly majestic. A long hood (to achieve uniform weighing between the axes, the engine had to be shifted closer to the center, so the hood turned out very long), huge wheels, short front skel, the laconic roof line in everything is clearly recognized by the stylistic elements of the classic Rolls-Royce cars of the middle of the last century. However, there are absolutely new features: passing over the threshold of the body is a clear fold or directed to the back lights under the windows. In general, with all the modernity and successfulness of the body, it is traced with the analogies with the Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith model, from which the trunk line clearly moved on the phantom, and perhaps the shape of the side glasses.

English Monument
Downtown in the history and stylist of Phantom, we have been completely distinguished from our direct duties to describe his lively test. Which, you must admit, it turned out much more interesting than we could imagine. After the test, comparing the feeling, we realized that everyone who took part in this event was experiencing the same feelings: admiration and some kind of inexplicable puppy delight. Someone has a sense of admiration arose immediately after the engine is launched, someone even earlier at the moment when the rear doors, which are traditionally called Kareny, opened in the opposite direction. They say that these doors delivered a lot of trouble to developers, since they should only be opened on security standards only after the front, as is done, for example, on American pickups with an elongated cabin. Rolls-Royce This alignment did not suit that led to the installation of a complex system of electronic control locks. The doors are silently closed with a servo drive having push-button control. Passenger sat down in the car, settled in the back seat and the door button started the beauty!

Now about starting the engine. This procedure is simple as twice two and majestic as the ritual of sacrifice. There is no key, there is only a small key chain, which is soft-clicking inserted into a special slot. Then we give on the brake, and by pressing the Start button, we start the engine. The launch occurs so expected quietly, you want to open the hood and see how strong the vibration of the motor is. Under the hood we did not become, however, the next part of our test was checking the boxes, which, as we heard, expose exactly Rolls. It looks simple: put on the hood put the arms of the matchbox, drive the motor and watched the boxes or not? In our case, the boxes did not even flush!

Trump card Phantom Salon. Luxury finishes and real royal sophistication in every little thing at first stun a little. Everyone knows that hand-assembly cars are inferior to the fact that they are going away from the conveyor. Rolls-Royce Exception from this rule. Here everything is at the highest level, and even the inconspicuous button, with which the rear doors are closed, looks solid. It does not work out to get rid of temptation to tell about the rugs, in the role of which the skins of the Angora sheep are of the gentle dressing, a total value of 12,500 euros in four pieces! Perhaps this car mats simply can not be cheaper. The salon is not only noble and roads, it is also extremely technological, and the technology is not simply integrated into the stylized old
gliani interior, they are frankly disguised in it. But it is enough to press a pair of keys, and a panel of mahogany, in the center of which dimly tick the clock with the Rolls-Royce logo, is inferior to a liquid crystal monitor (exactly the same monitors are built into the backs of the chairs), and the joystick, which at BMW goes out of the central console The fifth and seventh series are called IDRIVE, and here Rotary Controller. The practical differences between these devices we did not find that it is quite logical, given the almost Bavarian origin of Rolls Royce.

Especially for wheeled emblems, Bavarian engineers developed their bearings. When the wheel begins to spin, its center remains almost in place, and the RR emblem on all wheels is always located strictly vertically.

When designing the cabin, the results of large-scale studies were taken into account, which showed that the owners of Rolls-Royce cars often cost without hired drivers and fell behind the wheel. As a result, Phantom was developed in the same way convenient for sitting in the driver's seat and for those located in the back seat. The front seats are really exposed and ergonomic, but the back is sitting as if it is more comfortable. The wide rear seat is made in the form of two seats with curved, almost vertical backrests, they are installed in such a way that those sitting in them are behind the door opening in the shadow of a powerful roof rack. Feeling as if you sit in a ten meter limousine: Spacious and at the same time with this home comfort. On a flat road, speed is not perfectly completely, on an uneven energy-intensive suspension eats all the lights of the road surface with lightweight rustle. For example, rails at the intersection of Nevsky and Foundry for Rolls-Royce Phantom does not exist at all.

Luxury movement
Let's say straight, wheel all day on the car that has running on its century less than ten kilometers, we were not allowed. However, in order to compile an idea of \u200b\u200bwhat the nests of this low mastodont, the possibilities were abuse. The main rule is no manageable driving and riding in the side slide! We drove chinno as the disciples of driving schools. The seven engine remained himself and turned out to be quite capable of providing a neat ride, without provoking the driver for road feats. However, it is impossible to call this motor seven. Wrecked for 3 mm cylinders and on
4.6 mm Increased piston stroke, the working volume of a 12-cylinder V-shaped Bavarian motor brought to quite Rolls-Roisovsky (like a silver figure of 1970) 6749 cubic meters. See Power increased slightly from 445 to 453 hp, but it is achieved at a smaller speed of 5350 instead of 6000. But the torque has grown substantially from 600 to 720 nm. In the street racing phantom, perhaps, would have been a great success, just that someone to put a couple with him? To measure whether such a bulldin can accelerate to 100 km / h per five with a small second, we did not become a palace area, which was held our test drive, was too slippery and too crowd.

Six-speed ZF production machine. Precise copy of the transmission of BMW seven. Here even the lever is attached the same, namely on the steering column.
The brightest detail of the famous figure on the hood. Its official name of Ecstasy, unofficial a lot, and not all of them are suitable in order to be mentioned in the journal. Until now, it is the opinion that it is made of pure silver, and although in fact now the spirit is made of stainless steel, but in the past of copper, zinc and nickel alloys, these figures are trying to kidnap the amateurs of automotive heraldry. According to unverified data, the statuette should hide inside even from a light click on it. Checked. Do not hide. Under the end of the experiment, the click steel is already far from light, but polished with chopped into powder bones of cherry (also untested information) stood on the hood, like an unshakable monument of our gullibility. However, it is possible that she start hiding, it was necessary to click any secret button

Other features of the car caused no less close attention. First of all, made specifically for Phantom huge wheels. The car is equipped with the latest Michelin tires with the PAX system. The charm of their understandable thing is not in the amount, but in the fact that they allow in the case of a puncture to continue moving at a speed of 80 km / h and drive in such a state more than a hundred miles. In addition, especially for wheel emblems, Bava Ski engineers developed their bearings. When the wheel begins to spin, its center remains almost in place, and the RR emblem on all wheels is always located strictly vertically.

Test time ended, and we all examined and fell a car. As it turned out later, each of us had a strange feeling at this moment, as if we did not know enough about the phantom that we had only the top of the iceberg, the main part of which lies where only the experience of those elected who can afford to own this luxury. Probably, this is true, because, as one of the contemporaries said, such drinks do not drink a volley.

The salon is not only noble and roads, it is also extremely technologically technologically, and technology is not simply integrated into the stylized Staroangalian interior, they are frankly disguised.

Anecdot: 1930th year. Rolls Royce goes south of France, and he suddenly breaks the crankshaft. The car owner calls on the phone's nearest French dealer, from England, two mechanics arrive at the airplane, quickly change the shaft on a new and fly away. A little shocked by all this traveler sits into the car and goes on. Suddenly he remembers that the mechanics did not leave him a bill for work and, being a decent person, writes about it to the company. After some time, the answer is coming from Rolls Royce: the repairs described in your letter does not mean. The crankshafts of our company will never break.

Rolls-Royce car owners often cost without hired drivers and fell behind the wheel. Phantom was designed equally convenient for sitting in the driver's seat and for located in the back seat.

Text and Pictures: Alexander Volaytes