Henry Ford never would have made it at Rolls-Royce. His quote about not listening to his customers—“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse”—contradicts the British coachbuilder’s entire philosophy.
Because when you talk to the folks who work there, from Chief Executive Officer Torsten Mueller-Otvos on down, they talk about customer feedback so often and so worshipfully that one begins to wonder if they’re kowtowing to clients a little too much, as if drunk on some sort of Grey Poupon-flavored Kool-Aid.
But the powers that be at Rolls-Royce have a point. Any company that sells just over 5,000 of its products worldwide—and at a prohibitively high price—is vulnerable by nature. “Like porcelain,” is how one Rolls-Royce spokesman describes it. Ultra-high-net-worth individuals are notoriously demanding consumers. After all, they pay exorbitant amounts for products and services rendered.
That belief has seeped into the 2021 Ghost, the long-anticipated second generation of the best-selling sedan the brand has ever made. The original debuted in 2009 as the first modern Rolls-Royce. Thanks to its massive V12 engine, 563 horsepower, and 575 pound-feet of torque, it had enough power and performance capability to compete with cars much sharper and nimbler to drive than Rolls-Royce’s then-stalwart, the Phantom saloon.
For that first generation, Rolls-Royce borrowed BMW expertise (and BMW 7-Series components) for steering, suspension, transmission, and brakes that allowed it to double equally as a capable daily drivers’ car. Its true genius, though, was to marry that level of performance with a large rear cabin that held the sort of creature comforts typically found in a chauffeured conveyance.
That broad capability—decadence and drivability together, as never before—made the Ghost widely appealing among this admittedly niche-buying segment: the .01% of people able and eager to spend more than $300,000 on a car. Until the Cullinan SUV, which commanded roughly half of Rolls-Royce’s 5,125 annual sales globally last year, the Ghost made up the bulk of Rolls-Royce’s annual sales. (Until recent years, units sold barely touched 4,000 worldwide.)
The 2021 Ghost took five years to develop. It has all-wheel-drive and a newly toned-down demeanor. It’s a subtle change, but there are fewer styling lines folded across the sides, hood, and rear of the body—engineers hand-welded a single sheet of aluminum across the hood, for example, rather than multiple sheets, to simpler effect. The headlights are bigger, but the backs of the grille slats are matted in black so as not to reflect too much light from all that polished chrome.
Those “less is more” styling adjustments come by request from hundreds of owners, according to Mueller-Otvos. In the current age, he says, no one of taste wants to be seen as flashy or decadent. It’s just outré.
Still, the $332,500 sedan retains a grand sense of occasion whenever you drive it. I got behind the wheel of one last week in Austin, Texas, that came with exterior midnight sapphire paint and a cashmere grey and navy blue interior. The extravagance extends down to the lambswool floor mats, which were so thick my outstretched hand disappeared in their depths—and so densely dyed they’d look good trimming a shearling jacket on a Milanese runway.
Those comforts, as well as others such as “soft close” doors, Rolls-Royce bespoke sound, and rear-theater audio configuration, chrome-plated exhaust pipes, rear folding picnic tables, front and rear ventilated and massage seats, and polished stainless steel elements put the price up to $430,050. It may not be a flashy car, but it certainly grabs one’s attention.