It isn’t every day that we get to drive a Rolls-Royce. It isn’t every day that we get to drive an electric car either. But there we were, driving the Rolls-Royce Phantom 102EX, the British carmaker’s experiment with electric cars.
BMW’s U.S. division is recalling almost every V8 and V12 model they’ve sold in North America, including the Rolls-Royce Phantom, stretching as far back as 2002.
Rolls-Royce has a customisation option that lets owners change every inch of their car when it comes to colours and materials, before they take delivery of their personalised car. The Rolls-Royce Bespoke Programme can take six months or more to complete their handiwork, and apparently, a lot of customers in the UAE do not want to wait that long. Abu Dhabi is one of the firm’s best dealerships in terms of sales So pre-customised Rolls-Royce models are shipped in, done up in various tasteful themes, to satisfy customers who want instant gratification.
It’s not everyday that I get a call to come down for a press event in Abu Dhabi, a couple of hours before the actual event. Normally, I wouldn’t bother, but this time it was a chance to drive, briefly, cars from the Rolls Royce range. The BMW-owned firm had two Ghosts and one Phantom lined up for a limited excursion around the streets of Abu Dhabi. While not a proper test drive, a Rolls Royce is still a Rolls Royce after all.
Rolls-Royce has developed a new Phantom Bespoke Collection exclusively for the Middle East. Just six cars will arrive in the GCC region as of August, in what is largely a new paint-and-trim package.
The most famous launch at the recent 2009 Shanghai Auto Show was the Geely GE, a car so blatantly derivative of its source material that Rolls Royce considered suing the Chinese company for copyright infringement.