Rolls Royce Ghost

The Rolls-Royce Ghost is a new, smaller luxury saloon automobile from Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. The "Ghost" nameplate, named in honour of a car first produced in 1906, was announced in April 2009 at the Auto Shanghai show. During development, the Ghost was known as the "RR4." Designed aiming for a lower price category for Rolls models, the expected retail price will be around £170,000 (US$255,000). The production model was officially unveiled at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show.

Design
The Ghost was designed by Ian Cameron and engineered by Helmut Riedl, who led the development of the fifth-generation Rolls-Royce Phantom. The Ghost, codenamed RR4 during its design phase, was developed to compete with vehicles significantly less expensive than the Phantom, such as the Maserati Quattroporte and Bentley Continental Flying Spur. The Ghost will borrow 20% of its parts from the BMW F01 platform underpinning the current BMW 7 Series. The car has a wheelbase, roof height, bonnet height and track widths all of its own. The parts supplied by BMW will be used in functional places unseen by the driver. Rolls-Royce has stated that the engine will be a twin-turbo 6.6-litre V12 producing 574 hp mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission. The car is expected to weigh around 2300 kg.



200EX concept
The original concept car, named the 200EX, was officially unveiled at the March 2009 Geneva Motor Show, indicating the styling direction of the production model Ghost.

Unlike the aluminum-bodied Phantom, the 200EX will be made from steel, which has a higher tensile strength and can therefore be made thinner. The chassis will use an intelligent four corner air suspension system and multi-link aluminium front and rear axles. Systems such as Active Roll Stabilisation, four corner air springs and Variable Damping Control operate as one, imperceptibly to the driver and passengers to provide the best possible comfort for occupants. An all new and extremely sensitive air suspension connected to the main computer will detect the movement of a single rear passenger from one side of the seat to the other, and will compensate accordingly. Twenty percent of all components are shared with BMW Group cars, including the electronics. Some of the shared chassis components come from the BMW 7 Series, but the 200EX uses Phantom-style air springs.



The engine is a 6.6 litre twin-turbo V12 rated 571 bhp (426 kW) with ZF 8-speed automatic transmission. This engine will allow the Ghost to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 4.7, and has an electronically limited top speed of 155 mph.