Final Rolls-Royce Phantom floats down production line
BY TIM NICHOLSON | 2nd Feb 2017
The BWW Group-owned British car-maker has ended production of the Phantom VII after a 13-year run at the company’s Goodwood, UK, factory.
Rolls said the last Phantom “signals the end of the first successful chapter in the renaissance of Rolls-Royce under new custodianship and the establishment of a true global centre of luxury excellence in West Sussex, England”.
The last Phantom VII is an extended-wheelbase limousine commissioned by a “renowned contemporary collector”.
The company has not revealed the price of the final Phantom. In Australia, the standard extended wheelbase variant is sold for $990,000 driveaway.
Inside, the Phantom has decorative wooden panels – a feature of the model throughout its 92-year life – this time depicting a 1930s ocean liner, while the nautical theme is carried over to “tone-on-tone” embroidery on the powder blue leather upholstery that evokes the movement of the sea, according to Rolls.
The two clocks housed on the partition wall and in the front cabin hark back to the radio clocks found in grand ocean liners of the 1930s, while the hand-crafted lambswool carpets have a hand-cut “wake effect”.
Exterior flourishes include a twin ocean coach-line with ocean liner motif to the car’s shoulder, pinstripe tyres and a solid silver Spirit of Ecstasy. It is finished in Blue Velvet paint.
As previously reported, the VII will make way for an all-new eighth-generation model that will be underpinned by a new all-aluminium architecture that will also form the basis of Rolls’ forthcoming first SUV, dubbed the Cullinan.
The seventh-generation Phantom was released globally in 2003 before the arrival of the Series II in early 2012. It was the first new product produced after BMW purchased the rights to the brand in 1998.
