Rolls-Royce Ghost review

The Ghost is an incredible place to spend time in, replete with cherishable details. Rolls-Royce obviously prides itself on its incredible craftspersonship, and the fit and finish is extraordinary. There are power-assisted doors with gyroscopic sensors to detect if the car is on an incline. Rather than lots of distracting detail inside, there are long, straight lines of stitching. Open-pore wood decorates the dashboard, with a glowing Ghost nameplate on the passenger side that uses 152 top-mounted LEDs and 90,000 laser-etched dots across the surface to disperse the light evenly. The air vents are stainless steel, and have a pleasing resonance. The climate control itself is by rotating red and blue discs, with beautifully damped rotary knobs to control the fan speed. One suspects that capacitive switchgear is never going to be allowed to besmirch a Rolls cabin (although the main dials are now digital).

In the Black Badge there’s a new carbon weave with metallic fibres picking out the diamond pattern, an aluminium Black Badge infinity symbol between the back seats and a blacked-out clock with only the tips of the hands and the quarter-hour markers brightened in chrome.

A bespoke audio system incorporates a resonance chamber into the body’s sills, effectively turning the car into a giant sub-woofer. A big amp controls 18 channels to provide a 1300W output, and the set-up uses magnesium-ceramic speaker cones. There are even active microphones to detect frequency imbalances which the amplifier automatically compensates for. Meanwhile, a Micro-Environment Purification System has ultra-sensitive impurity sensors to switch the air con to recirculation if it detects airborne contaminants. That really is a 2020 USP. In fact, the Ghost’s cabin is so good it almost makes you forget what an arse-ache 2020 was.