Used Rolls-Royce Ghost for under £60k?
Yes, please...
Back in 2021, as part of its romp through the automotive undergrowth, Brave Pill happened upon a Rolls-Royce Ghost that was advertised for £69,995 - a price tag commensurate with the 105,492 miles showing on its odometer. A year later, our buying guide on the subject suggested the lowest-priced example for sale in the UK was an English White one (presumably tasked with wedding duties every weekend) for £66,500. It had covered 123k.
With four years additional depreciation taken into account, you can now buy one for slightly less than £60k - and it appears there’s no longer any need to use six-figure mileage as a disclaimer. Quite the opposite. This one, looking tip top in Madeira Maroon, and with just one previous owner on the logbook, has covered only 58k (equivalent to under 4k a year), and has the kind of advisory-free MOT history that speaks to an attentive service history.
Of course, the first-generation Ghost’s broader disclaimer has nothing to do with miles travelled, and more to do with the F01 7 Series platform underneath. Some considered its shared components - which stretched beyond structure and well into the thinly disguised iDrive infotainment system - a necessary evil. This was, after all, a more cost-effective sort of Rolls-Royce, one specifically intended to hoover up the kind of audience which didn’t fancy sitting in the back of a Phantom.
But to dismiss a used Ghost on this basis is to ignore all the bits that were absolutely bespoke to it. Like the rear-hinged suicide doors and sumptuously appointed rear cabin. As pointed out in our buying guide, each example took a month to hand assemble, and the wood used in any one car was all from the same tree to ensure that it would age at the same rate. That is not the kind of painstaking attention to detail you get in a BMW.
The engine heralded from Germany, mind - but even that was made to seem different, it being a stroked version of the turbocharged N74 V12 used in the 760i. It was intended to seem majestically unstressed, and did - but could still whisk the Ghost to 62mph in less than 5 seconds if you did feel like stressing it. This duality was at the heart of the car’s appeal: it was the owner-driver Rolls, with just enough connection to make the front seat matter, yet still isolated enough to feel properly special.
The proposition worked, too. The Ghost was easily special enough for people to look past the BMW ghost in its machine, and sales boomed. It was by far the best-selling Rolls before the Cullinan turned up, and we’d argue it’s a million times more desirable than that car at a fraction of the cost. Granted, none of that makes it cheap to run, and its maker moved the game on massively with the second generation - but that model will cost you at least twice as much. For maximum V12 waft at minimum outlay, we can think of little better.
I'd have one over a used range rover any day as an example
The “baby” Rolls is still a foot longer than most other luxury saloons of the time.
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