The sign we just raced by read "Caution: Racehorses Crossing." At least, I think so. It should have said, "Red Alert: CEO Driving."
It's a slate-gray December morning in West Sussex, England, and I'm experiencing a ride in the new Rolls-Royce Phantom ($333,350), the marque's flagship model that's been in and out of production since 1925. Ian Robertson, the executive leading the brand's dramatic rebirth, is behind the wheel. He keeps charging up on lorries hauling farm equipment down these narrow country lanes scribbled across the hillsides. "It's a very noticeable car," Robertson says. "I do like to drive it rather than ride in the back." My chauffeur seems to be getting carried away—but it's tough to blame him.
We're touring the 12,000-acre Goodwood estate, home to Rolls-Royce Motor Cars' headquarters and manufacturing plant. Goodwood is also home to the Earl of March, Rolls's landlord, who in 2003 granted the company a 125-year lease, allowing it to build the new facility. (March lives in the estate's neoclassical pile, Goodwood House.) As Ian Cameron, Rolls-Royce's chief designer, describes the setting, "You don't try to make wine in a brewery."
Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake pours from the 15 strategically placed Lexicon speakers, making it feel like the devil's trombones are emanating from an orchestra pit beneath my seat. The signal characteristic of a Rolls-Royce is its "waftability," a term coined 100 years ago after a journalist wrote of "being wafted through the countryside." Thanks to the hand-welded Phantom spaceframe, the largest all-aluminum spaceframe ever built, stiffer than a Formula One car's, it feels like we're being blown along on a magic carpet outfitted with jet turbines. Thankfully, there aren't any ponies gamboling around the grounds today—just the perversely silent 453 thoroughbreds beneath the Phantom's mile-long hood.
The Phantom, the first "new Rolls-Royce" produced at Goodwood back in 2003, was the opening salvo in the battle for the premier luxury car. The backstory is this: In 1998, there was a dirty divorce between Bentley and Rolls-Royce, ending a 67-year partnership. Volkswagen bought Bentley and the old manufacturing plant the companies shared in Crewe. The BMW Group, meanwhile, bought the name Rolls-Royce Motor Cars (along with the Spirit of Ecstasy, the familiar winged-woman ornament and logo), leaving them to figure out just how to become the Rolls-Royce of Rolls-Royce fame from scratch. The result? Within five years, the Goodwood plant was built; a workforce of mostly local craftsmen was trained; and the new Phantom was released, making good on the brand's century-old claim of peerless excellence, which, truth be told, hadn't always rung true. Then, at the Detroit auto show this year, the Phantom Drophead Coupé—the Phantom's younger, cooler brother priced at around $407,000—was introduced.
The Drophead Coupé is a car of contradictions. It looks like it's moving even when it's parked but seems—and sounds—motionless when it's moving. Built on a slightly smaller version of the Phantom's spaceframe, it's large but lean. The Drophead's design cues come from the Phantom, Cameron tells me, but also the America's Cup J-Class yachts of the thirties. This is a Rolls-Royce for the younger owner who doesn't mind having wind-tousled hair. Cameron says the challenge with the convertible was to live up to Henry Royce's vision. "He had an interest in producing cars with what he called 'fizz,' and this has it."
At last, I'm handed the key to the Phantom that Robertson devoured the countryside with earlier. Cocooned inside, I don't realize the engine is even running until I tap the gas and feel the effortless fluency of the transmission kick in. The North American walnut burr of the dash is so glowing you could roast a marshmallow off it. With the Spirit of Ecstasy as my guide and "London Calling" assaulting me from every angle, I wonder if the new Phantom might change people's stodgy notions of Rolls-Royce. It has certainly changed mine.
But I figure I should seek higher counsel, and so I point the stately beast toward another West Sussex landmark: Redlands, Keith Richards's country home, famously raided in 1967—another moment when the stodgy notion of what's British came into question. Keith's reportedly a Bentley man and I can't help wondering what he'll make of a 21st-century Rolls. And so, with the help of the Phantom's built-in navigation system, I find my way with alarming ease and turn down a stone-paved lane leading to the infamous thatch-roofed red-brick house.
Unfortunately, the front gate is locked and there's no Bentley parked out front. But walking back to the Phantom, I'm greeted by an old country type in Hunter wellies and a tweed cap coming toward me with his black Labrador. "Are you looking for someone?" he crows. I explain why I'm here and he cries out, laughing, "I thought you was him coming back with a new car!" The man surveys the Phantom, walking his hound slowly around it and recounting how he first rode in a Rolls-Royce in 1937. For some, it seems, it's impossible to outdo the good old days. "No, I don't like the new ones," he says finally, shaking his head. "It's too big. Where in the hell are you going to park that?"
