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About Rolls-Royce

When Charles Rolls met Henry Royce at a Manchester hotel in 1904, the result was a partnership that would define the very idea of automotive luxury. The Silver Ghost of 1907 earned the title of the best car in the world through feats of reliability, and for more than a century since the Rolls-Royce name has stood for silence, wealth and a flying lady on the radiator. The cars are less driven than wafted, a word the company itself uses with a straight face.

The modern company is the product of an unusual corporate divorce. After the original Rolls-Royce collapsed in 1971, the car business was spun off from the aero engines, and when it was sold in 1998, Volkswagen got the Crewe factory and Bentley while BMW secured the Rolls-Royce name for cars. BMW built a new home at Goodwood in West Sussex and launched the Phantom there in 2003. The aerospace and power company Rolls-Royce plc remains entirely separate, which explains why its financial results occasionally sneak into car news.

Under BMW the brand has thrived, with record sales in recent years driven by the Cullinan SUV, younger buyers and the dark-toned Black Badge versions. Its bespoke department will paint, stitch and inlay almost anything a client can imagine, and its Coachbuild division creates multimillion-dollar one-offs. The electric Spectre coupe opened a new chapter, a second electric car is in development, and the company has said its V12 engines will carry on alongside the batteries for longer than once planned.

Rivals at this altitude are few: Bentley, Mercedes-Maybach and, increasingly, ultra-luxury Chinese brands that openly borrow the Rolls-Royce look. The coverage here follows new models and Series II updates, bespoke and coachbuilt commissions, sales results, celebrity cars, depreciation stories, and the occasional collision between an immovable Rolls-Royce and an unlucky lesser car. Rolls-Royce rarely discusses its customers, but its cars have a way of turning up in the news anyway, whether at a royal wedding, on a red carpet or at an auction house, and each Series II update or bespoke reveal is studied closely by rivals hoping to borrow a little of its magic.

Rolls-Royce

The Spirit of Ecstasy marque, built by hand at Goodwood under BMW ownership: Phantom, Ghost, Cullinan, the electric Spectre and wildly bespoke one-offs.

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Inside Rolls-Royce

Cullinan Rolls-Royce's V12 SUV, named for the largest diamond ever found, a high-riding drawing room that became the marque's runaway hit and favorite of customizers.
Phantom The flagship Rolls-Royce since 1925, a hand-built V12 limousine with a gallery for art in its dashboard and room for the world's most extravagant one-offs.
Spectre Rolls-Royce's first electric car, a silent, starlit two-door coupe that recast the V12 grand tourer for the battery age, now in Series II form.
Ghost The 'smaller' Rolls-Royce, a V12 sedan named for the 1907 Silver Ghost and built for owners who like to drive, now in Series II and Black Badge form.

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