2025 Rolls-Royce Black Badge Ghost | UK Review
Can Rolls really claim a 2.5-tonne slice of unobtanium is sporty?
It’s a surprise nowadays to drive a car that isn’t, in some way, electrified. Whether it’s a relatively basic hatchback with mild-hybrid tech or a supercar with a socket, most headline debuts have the guiding hand of battery power somewhere.
But a Rolls-Royce feels like the exception to so many rules, and when an engine is this smooth and hushed, who needs electric boosters? Not least when the clientele is hardly hammering at the doors of the Goodwood factory demanding lower running costs or more efficient powertrains.
Indeed, this Black Badge Ghost Series II – to give it the full, imposing billing – goes the other way by applying a loftier list price and a hefty chunk of extra power to a car that hardly needed either to swell. Thus the ‘base’ £300k (ish), 571hp Ghost becomes the £350k (ish) 600hp Black Badge Ghost.
Yep, that is the correct way around. Black Badge is effectively a whole sub-brand, the firm’s ‘disruptive alter ego’ in its own words. It accounts for a quarter of Rolls sales nowadays, and unlike the countless Black Editions elsewhere in the market, it’s more than a mere design makeover. Though naturally strides have been taken there too, with a bolder grille treatment up front and darkened chrome (or ‘noir effect’) applied almost everywhere, the Spirit of Ecstasy the most dramatic recipient.
The Ghost already looked fairly taut and compact beside the Phantom and Cullinan, and the BB makeover suits it well. Noir effect extends inside, too, with a new ‘technical carbon’ finish that weaves carbon fibre and wood together, cures it under pressure at 100 degrees, and achieves a look that’s far classier than carbon makeovers elsewhere. Though you can always take things further on the aftermarket…
Beneath the skin, the brake pedal’s travel has been reduced and its biting point raised – ‘directly responding to client requests for a uniquely potent expression of the Rolls-Royce brand’ – while the old-school gear selection stalk now features an amusingly subtle ‘Low’ button, which sharpens the eight-speed automatic’s mapping, halving shift times, while freeing ‘a subtly more voluble note from the motor car’s exhaust system’. You really don’t get phraseology like that elsewhere.
There are still no paddles – indeed any manual control at all – over the transmission, and what Rolls construes as a louder soundtrack seems negligible to anyone familiar with the more braying mob of sports saloons out there. This engine remains whisper quiet until truly unleashed, at which point there’s a delicious but always polite 12-cylinder snarl to accompany your slightly ungodly slingshot forwards, the Flying Lady almost eyeing the clouds as the prow rises.
The engine remains a 6.75-litre twin-turbo V12 that’s shared with the Phantom, one in danger of mocking Rolls’ pursuit of battery power when it’s so damn hushed. There’s little difference to cabin ambience with it idling or extinguished. With no hybrid helpers, the claims are 18.3mpg and 348g/km of CO2 emissions, though hundreds of miles of driving with not one thought for efficiency saw us score 20.3mpg.
And the Black Badge really does encourage you to get stuck in. While the Ghost was already an implausibly quiet capsule to float ethereally round in, this one enjoys being a scoundrel too. The steering is alert but stops short of any tangible dialogue with your hands. Yet even with so many deliberate layers between you and the road surface, there’s a bond to be forged here. It’s a car you can hustle confidently along, revelling in just how high its ‘power reserve’ percentage readout stays even when you’re clogging it.
The adaptive air suspension reacts to a camera feed of the road ahead and is simply never flustered, allowing you to pile on – and maintain – speed at least as easily as a plug-in M5 or AMG that can feel hobbled by its own mass. The Ghost’s width and the inevitably limited command of its brakes are the biggest barriers to how fast you’ll go.
The damping parameters tighten in ‘Low’, but it’s no night and day shift. Equally, you never truly sense the active all-wheel drive or all-wheel steer at play, so carefully interwoven they are into the rest of the BB’s character. It’s only when I witness Nic C make a tight manoeuvre for photographs that there’s an explicit demonstration of the rear wheels turning at a converse angle to the fronts.
It's never going to cut shapes like an immaturely driven M or AMG, of course, even if there’s an option to disable the DSC tucked deeply within the touchscreen. This isn’t a car that bubbles away in your palms and it’s difficult not to crave an actual rev counter, a proper sport mode or the chance for some manual encouragement of the gearbox. But drive the car with enough positivity and those will all seem like frivolities anyway. Gotta respect Rolls for sticking firmly to its guns and doing a sports saloon its own way, too…
Lots of carmakers claim to be unique; that their car has unrivalled performance, luxury or design chutzpah. But a Rolls-Royce always feels unmistakably so, and the fact that this feels so much like the Dawn, Wraith and Spectre that have punctuated the list of cars I’ve driven over the last decade is actually its USP, not a reason to question Rolls’ progress.
Our photoshoot, if Oli B’s fine bunch of stills don’t portray it, took place in the eye of wet, windy storm thrashing South Wales. Rarely has it seemed less of an issue, the sheer heft of the Ghost – a car insulated better than my house – ensuring the interior remained a tranquil respite from it all. Even shutting its vast doors via the prolonged pull of a switch stops your arm being wrenched from its socket by a sudden gust. And yes, the interior avoids screens where possible and offers a decadent safe space for proper switchgear. It’s celebrated rather than shunned, the metal air vents and the rolling dials of their temperature controls a particular highlight.
A ‘regular’ Ghost boasts all that too, of course, and it won’t be much slower or less agile down a snaking stretch of road. But Rolls doesn’t quote prices (other than to declare each car a unique commission to its buyer), and if you’ve shrugged off the utterly fabulous Flying Spur to land this far up the food chain, any shred of austerity has already been cast from your criteria. Ticking the box to make your Ghost a Black Badge Ghost is surely child’s play for anyone with a shred of interest in driving the thing rather than being coddled in the back.
2025 ROLLS-ROYCE BLACK BADGE GHOST | SPECIFICATION
Engine: 6749cc V12, twin-turbocharged
Transmission: 8-speed auto, all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 600@5,250rpm
Torque (lb ft): 664lb ft@1,700rpm
0-62mph: 4.7secs
Top speed: 155mph (electronically limited)
Weight: 2,507kg
CO2: 348g/km
MPG: 18.3
Price: £350,000 (est)
If you have the money then most would easily overcome the feeling of such ostentatious indulgence,I likely would.
It remains a lottery win car for me just not with that interior colour optioned whilst ensuring there was a fair few quid left over to pass to those who are saying " sir can you help me"
In reality thoguh if you can afford £350k then you likely have 5 or 6 cars and this is just one of them at your house in X but you live in an apartment in Y.
d offspring of a Rolls Royce and 7 series BMW to me. Interior two tone leather is expensive hide but the combination looks a tad tacky. 12 cylinder effortless waftiness is definitely the most desirable element. It's good that RR is evolving away from the stately home or Gentlemen's club on wheels as the old money buyers are replaced by a younger wealthy clientele who clearly want to drop £350k on this contemporary styled roller. Personally would rather have a Bentley Flying Spur.Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff