BMW’s highway to proudly owning Rolls-Royce started lengthy earlier than the primary Phantom rolled out of Goodwood. Within the early Nineteen Nineties, the Munich automaker made an unsuccessful bid to purchase stakes in each Rolls-Royce and Bentley. A decade later, they lastly received their probability — however not with no difficult battle with Volkswagen. At first, VW ended up with the designs, the Spirit of Ecstasy emblem, and the well-known Pantheon grille, whereas BMW solely secured the Rolls-Royce identify and emblems. For a number of months, it appeared like VW may construct Rolls-Royce automobiles utilizing BMW’s engines beneath a licensing deal. Finally, the 2 sides struck an settlement: beginning in 2003, BMW would take full management of Rolls-Royce, whereas VW stored Bentley.
Kickstarting the Rolls-Royce Model
As soon as the settlement was in place, BMW confronted an uncommon problem: launching a brand new Rolls-Royce with no single carryover design or blueprint from the outgoing Silver Seraph. The corporate had the identify, the badge, and the model’s heritage — however not one of the bodily parts that made a Rolls immediately recognizable. That meant beginning with a clean sheet of paper, reimagining each line and element from the bottom up.
Designer Ian Cameron set to work adopting the Pantheon grille (which was, at first, off-limits as a part of the model’s mental property) and reimagining the Spirit of Ecstasy for BMW’s first Rolls-Royce, the seventh era Rolls-Royce Phantom. It changed the Silver Seraph as Rolls’s full-size luxurious sedan, which meant it wanted epic proportions that heralded simply how a lot cash you have been sharing the highway with. As such, the Phantom touted an extended wheelbase and hood and excessive roof with tall wheels and tires. Underneath the hood, the larger-than-life aesthetic continued. BMW bored and stroked their current V12, the N73, to six.75 liters. The brand new mill supplied 453 horsepower at 531 pound-feet of torque, with a lot of the torque obtainable from simply 1,000 rpm.
Constructing Intrigue
Just like BMW’s advertising blitz on the US with the MINI model, Rolls-Royce’s debut oozed fashion. The automotive debuted in simply three cities — Culver Metropolis, California, Miami, and Lyndhurst, New Jersey — in nondescript industrial buildings. You may solely be invited if a Rolls-Royce dealership vouched for you and accompanied you to the viewing. The cloak and dagger added to the attract, and it labored. “It had a very James Bond-like high quality, and folks beloved it,” recounts Robert Austin, Rolls-Royce’s North American Communications Director on the time.
The Phantom’s success was robust sufficient that BMW quickly started work on a smaller “entry-level” Rolls-Royce, the Ghost. Although nonetheless priced round $280,000, it was marketed because the “on a regular basis” Rolls. As designer Ian Cameron defined to The New York Occasions in 2004: “Our house owners sometimes have a five- or six-car storage. The Phantom is likely to be a tuxedo…[the Ghost], a enterprise swimsuit. The tailor cuts the material the identical approach, however the swimsuit is totally different.” Immediately, Rolls-Royce sells greater than ten occasions as many automobiles because it did in 2003 — a metamorphosis that started with the Phantom and the extraordinary circumstances of BMW’s takeover. What began as a failed bid within the Nineteen Nineties turned one in every of BMW’s most strategic victories, solid in tense negotiations with Volkswagen and the choice to design a Rolls-Royce completely from scratch.
