BMW’s highway to proudly owning Rolls-Royce started lengthy earlier than the primary Phantom rolled out of Goodwood. Within the early Nineties, the Munich automaker made an unsuccessful bid to purchase stakes in each Rolls-Royce and Bentley. A decade later, they lastly bought their probability — however not with out a sophisticated 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 logos. For a number of months, it seemed like VW would possibly construct Rolls-Royce vehicles 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 saved 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 out a 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 components 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 technology 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 had been sharing the highway with. As such, the Phantom touted a protracted wheelbase and hood and excessive roof with tall wheels and tires. Beneath the hood, the larger-than-life aesthetic continued. BMW bored and stroked their present 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 out there 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 could possibly 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 really James Bond-like high quality, and other people 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 Instances in 2004: “Our house owners sometimes have a five- or six-car storage. The Phantom may be a tuxedo…[the Ghost], a enterprise go well with. The tailor cuts the fabric the identical method, however the go well with is totally different.” At the moment, Rolls-Royce sells greater than ten occasions as many vehicles because it did in 2003 — a change that started with the Phantom and the extraordinary circumstances of BMW’s takeover. What began as a failed bid within the Nineties turned one among BMW’s most strategic victories, cast in tense negotiations with Volkswagen and the choice to design a Rolls-Royce solely from scratch.
