Car of the Year was the Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII

Conspicuous in its absence from our Car of the Year was the Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII. Our 2018 Car of the Year event was marked by great cars, fun people and wonderful wheeltime on road and racetrack. If there was one, slightly curious thread throughout, it was the sense of being at a party where the guest of honour was absent. The most significant luxury automotive launch of the year – perhaps, of the decade – was that of the all-new Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII. We had travelled to Europe late last year to drive the car and spend time with its design and engineering teams, detailed in a major feature in our January-February 2018 issue. Unfortunately for us, however, Australian deliveries had yet to begin in time for our Car of the Year event; the nearest our judging team could get to the new Phantom was to admire a display-only car in the Delivery Room of Zagame Automotive Group’s Rolls-Royce Melbourne dealership. Only the eighth generation of a model line that began in 1925, the new Phantom took the baton from a predecessor that has, since 2003, carried the entire company into a confident new era under BMW’s ownership. That confidence permeates the Phantom VIII – crucially, stopping short of arrogance.

The car’s vast size – 5.76 metres long in standard and 5.98 metres in extended versions, priced respectively at $950,000 and $1.1 million – is tempered by softer exterior lines and a tapered tail. Beneath is what Rolls-Royce calls the “architecture of luxury”, an all-aluminium spaceframe chassis that underpins the new Phantom with 30 per cent greater rigidity than its predecessor. From that impeccably solid engineering foundation, an unprecedented degree of electronic sophistication is applied to the driving and comfort experience. The twinturbocharged, 6.75-litre V12 engine drives through an eight-speed transmission that references satellites to anticipate hills and corners; self-levelling suspension makes millions of calculations each second to constantly adjust the electromagnetic dampers and maintain optimum ride and handling.

The interior is the essence of tasteful design and craftsmanship. The deceptive simplicity and elegance of its controls belies the world-leading technologies contributing to the occupants’ effortless transit: an Attentiveness Assistant monitors the driver’s eye movement to detect drowsiness; panoramic and helicopter-view cameras aid in low-speed manoeuvring; wi-fi, night vision, active cruise control and warning systems for collisions, pedestrians, cross traffic, lane departure and lane change are all standard. Where Rolls-Royce is concerned, ‘standard’ is only ever the starting point, with a staggering variety of rear seating configurations, leathers and timbers, exterior and interior colours, and the famous ‘Starlight’ fibre-optic headliner. The signature feature of the Phantom VIII interior is the Gallery, a windowed enclosure across roughly two-thirds of the dashboard fascia, for which an owner can commission an individual painting or sculpture. Indeed, the Gallery might be a study for the rest of the car: elegant, silent, utterly satisfying. Alas, like its fortunate owners, we must wait. – MICHAEL STAHL

Sources: Robb Report Australia, July 2018

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