2018 Rolls Royce Phantom - World's Most Luxurious Sedan!

2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII First Look | It's all new, we swear!
At a well-decorated warehouse just off Hollywood's Sunset Blvd., a gaggle of PR, design, operations, and executives from Rolls-Royce Motor Cars are stoking our excitement for the all-new, 2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII. Along with the normal Rolls-Roycey words like "heritage," "brand," and "bespoke," was a repeated phrase. A phrase that shouldn't be necessary. A phrase eliciting a concept that should be obvious if true. The new car, it said, was "not an evolution" on the current Phantom. That, friends, is exciting to hear.
Don't get us wrong, we like the train-engine-bolted-to-a-horseless-carriage look, and the beast's scale and presence on the street. Trouble is, since the car first took to unsmoothing our air with its cathedral-facade front end in 2003, the looks have gotten a little, um, tired. Blame the mercilessness of time. Blame the success of the car, which means they're on every street corner in west Los Angeles. Blame the "imitation-is-the-most-sincere-form-of-flattery" Chrysler 300. Blame the fact that this car's magnetism vaults it into the public eye more frequently than a Kardashian. Whatever the cause, fact is, the Phantom needs a reboot. A subtle evolution a la the last Bentley Continental won't do.
The lights are out. We're led through a darkened antechamber into the full-dark of the warehouse. We can see the shape. It's big and has the classic squared off D-pillar. The front, too, has the required grille bigness. It is enviously long.
Let's pause. Here at Autoblog, we're known for giving people advice. We take that responsibility seriously, because the results of our evaluations and expertise are often the reason someone has dropped thousands of dollars on a car they're going to live with for many years. We try to keep it on cars and to not to get too preachy on the life coaching.
We're going to break that convention now. Here's a life pro tip: The more frequently that someone in a position of power repeats a claim, the more likely it is that that claim is false.
The lights click on. The men and women of Rolls-Royce, for whom this project is a true honor, clap in genuine appreciation and reverence for what they've been a part of. And the journalists in the room turn to each other and mouth, "Wait, is this the new one?"
If you're casually familiar with the current-gen Phantom, based on seeing them pull into the club as you wait in line, then this new one will likely register as just another Phantom when it hits the streets early next year. Even if you're used to seeing a Rolls every day, you'll still have to squint a bit to see the changes.
Up front, the trademark grille is taller and wider. It was impressive before; it's impressive now. As always, this faux radiator is topped with a Spirit of Ecstasy that can be silver, gold-plated, or illuminated polycarbonate. We're sure if you asked nicely (with your Amex black card), it could make the winged woman out of whatever you wanted.
It's not just the grille that's taller, but the entire front of the vehicle is a bit more imposing than before. If you look at the old Phantom in profile, you'll see that the nose seems to drop off aft of the front spindles. The new car fixes that. It's a minor detail, but from the back of the trunk to the front bumper, the Phantom VIII has a continuous rise. The designers want you to envision a yacht powering through a harbor; we see a big car hunkered down on its 22-inch rear tires. Which, we think, is better than a boat.
Though Rolls-Royce doesn't like to brag about this (it's probably off-brand), this next-gen Phantom is actually, gasp, shorter than the car it replaces. It's only a few inches trimmed off the front of the car, and you'd need a ruler to confirm it, but it's true. Open the hood on the old Phantom and you'll see a lot of excess space ahead of the naturally-aspirated 6.75-liter V12, and then even more space ahead of the radiator that even non-vehicle-engineers could see is superfluous. Rolls didn't open the new, gorgeously domed hood – by far the best change to this new model – for us, which is a shame; we want to see how it got the same amount of cooling hardware in a smaller space along with the new turbos.
That's right, the Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII doesn't breathe on its own, but rather receives the assistance of a pair of turbochargers bolted to a Rolls-don't-round-up 6.75-liter V12. Horsepower output of the new engine is up to 563 bhp from a slack 453, while torque is at 664 pound-feet, up from 531. Rolls claims a 0-60 time of 5.3 seconds for the normal, 227.2-inch-long car and 5.4 for the 235.8-inch extended wheelbase version.
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