Rolls-Royce Phantom Menace

PH blags a £325k, 5.6m, 2630kg, 453bhp, 6.75-litre V12 two-door coupe during National Walk To Work Week

It doesn’t take long to get respectfully familiar with the Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupe, I have found, in spite of its magnificently overbearing presence on the road.

The R-R offers a uniquely engaging drive

So early one Sunday morning in the springtime, if you’d been up with the larks, you might have noticed an example weaving up the A285 toward Petworth in a less than stately fashion, its driver with one hand on the steering wheel, the other fiddling with the iDrive knob while trying to keep at least one eye focused on the road ahead. The cause of this distressing disordering of the Rolls-Royce universe was a Wave FM pop-jockey, whose banal witterings had been threatening to utterly undermine any possible enjoyment the Rolls might have provided since I’d left the factory gates at Goodwood a few miles back.

The final straw was an item on ‘National Walk To Work Week’, a concept with which the cove was sufficiently enamoured to suggest it might do us the world of good to forgo the luxury of motoring to one’s tiresome ‘commercial’ engagements.

Silky-smooth 6.75-litre V12 makes 453bhp

Had one been hacking a Vauxhall Vectra around the M25, such heresy might have seemed acceptable. At the wheel of a Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupe the suggestion was entirely beyond the pale.

Either way, not having fiddled with a BMW iDrive knob for quite a while, the annoyance passed before I’d managed to work out how to switch the radio off. Next-up were the Bee Gees warbling How Deep Is Your Love, a question which surely speaks to anyone lucky enough to have sampled the deeply spiritual joy of fast motoring behind the wheel of a Phantom Coupe. So I left the iDrive to get over itself, and concentrated on unleashing my inner Mr Toad.

Cabin furnishings are exquisite

The A285 between Goodwood and Petworth is the perfect ribbon of tarmac to indulge such fantasies, as it twists and turns, swoops and dives through the quintessentially English countryside of West Sussex.

Clutching the big, leather-rimmed steering wheel, ensconced in your armchair and with a wide-screen view of the road unravelling ahead, the Coupe provides a driving experience that is so engaging as to utterly transcend the ordinary. The long-travel accelerator and the finger-tip steering impart a ‘classic’ feel to proceedings, yet the former unleashes a rush of smooth and near-silent V12 power while the latter boasts all the directness and feel you need to deftly place and thread this 5.6-metre, 2.6-tonne leviathan through the corners in a manner that is downright sprightly. There’s even a Sport mode for the six-speed auto 'box and, duly employed, the Phantom Coupe will effortlessly breach 60mph in 5.6secs, then pull like a train all the way to its limited 155mph maximum.

And there's room in the rear for two

The Coupe’s technically advanced aluminium chassis is to all intents and purposes the same as the four-door Phantom, but with a wheelbase shortened 250mm and near-perfect (actually 49:51) weight distribution. It shares the Phantom’s self-levelling air suspension, but there’s a thicker rear anti-roll bar, stiffer rear dampers and the spring rates have been massaged.

The result, as you may witness for yourself at Goodwood this weekend, is a Rolls-Royce that genuinely hustles, picking up its skirts and flying around corners with a balance and poise that genuinely encourages spirited – if never quite ‘sporting’ – progress.

Obviously a difficult colour to photograph...

Why at Goodwood? Because the car Rolls-Royce kindly lent us to show-off at a recent PistonHeads Sunday service is the very same machine that will ply the Goodwood hillclimb as the event’s official safety/course car.

Finished in Darkest Tungsten, with 21ins alloy wheels and a glamorous brushed steel bonnet and windscreen surround, the ‘Goodwood’ Phantom Coupe came to us with an unexpected secret weapon tucked away in the top corners of the front and rear screens – white LED strobe lights that add an undeniable extra sense of urgency to the ‘get the hell out of my lane’ messages this huge chariot imparts to Sunday dawdlers when its vast Palladian-style grille looms in their mirrors at speed. (Ahem! At least we assume they might have such an effect…)

Our destination - a PH Sunday Service

The car is also fitted with the optional Starlight Headliner (which lights up like a distant galaxy overhead at night-time) and comes equipped with all the little luxuries and delights one expects when splashing out £325-odd thousand on a new commuter.

It’s fair to say that most of the PHers who attended the Sunday Service in question were suitably impressed at the opportunity to climb all over the car, especially as only a couple of hundred Phantom Coupes are built annually – and most are shipped overseas - they are an extremely rare sight on the road.

But I’ve got a suggestion that will indisputably change that situation for the better. It’s for a new government-sponsored program called National Drive To Work In A Phantom Week and - well, you get the idea.

(Note. Sincere thanks to Jon and Anna at the Rolls-Royce PR office, who gamely agreed to let PH loose with the Goodwood Phantom Coupe. And especially to Anna for getting up so early on a Sunday for us!)