In 2025, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars marks the centenary of the launch of the first Phantom. Throughout its long history, the nameplate has been reserved for the pinnacle model in the marque’s portfolio – the very apex of excellence.
Each iteration, up to and including the eighth generation currently being handcrafted at Goodwood, has seen advances in design, engineering, materials and technology. Today, the Phantom is the ultimate blank canvas for bespoke commissions too.
Its scale, elegance, presence and adaptability enable it to be whatever its owner wishes, including haute couture (Phantom Syntopia), famous films (Phantom Goldfinger), and Chinese culture (Phantom Extended ‘Year of the Dragon’).
The marque’s own Spirit of Ecstasy Mascot (Phantom Scintilla) is the brand’s bespoke offering. To honour the nameplate, Rolls-Royce has revealed the fascinating story behind its pinnacle product’s reputation.
Rolls-Royce first earned the accolade of ‘the best car in the world’ with the 30kW Silver Ghost, launched in 1906 – a vehicle improved on an almost chassis-by-chassis basis. By 1921, Royce realised the design was reaching its end point.
He then began work on its replacement, confirming in an advertisement in The Times newspaper in May of 1925 that the old model would be dubbed the Silver Ghost. It’s also the first mention of the new (at the time) Phantom nameplate.
A history making announcement for a name that is believed to have been coined by the car maker’s energetic and ever-inventive commercial managing director Claude Johnson. It was he who recognised that naming the company’s products could act as a sales device.
It was his fertile imagination that produced the inspired sobriquet ‘Silver Ghost’ for the otherwise prosaically titled 40/50 H.P. in 1907. That same year, he christened another 40/50 H.P. the ‘Green Phantom’, before bestowing the ‘Silver Phantom’ on two examples.
Johnson clearly understood the power of names like Phantom, Wraith and Ghost to convey the products’ supernatural quietness and ethereal grace – it’s why they’re still used today. He had some rather odd options too though, including the Dreadnought and the Cookie.
Back in 1925, Rolls-Royce supplied only rolling chassis, with the form, styling and appointment of the motor car itself in the hands of independent coachbuilders, who created bespoke bodywork to the owner’s specification.
Rolls-Royce offered the new Phantom in long-wheelbase form, suitable for formal saloon and limousine designs, and with a shorter wheelbase ideal for owner-driver motor cars with closed, open and ‘sportier’ coachwork.
Then as now, the Phantom’s generous proportions enabled owners to specify almost any detail or indulgence they wished. Some clients asked for concealable writing desks or swivelling occasional seats in their long-wheelbase limousines, for example.
Owner-drivers are known to have requested safes, dedicated spaces to stow golf clubs and even, in one famous instance, a secret compartment in which to carry diamonds. Over the four years that followed the Phantom’s launch, it’s design was further refined.
In 1929, The Times carried a fresh advertisement announcing the arrival of the Phantom II. The advertisement listed all the engineering improvements and upgraded components that justified its designation as an entirely new model.
Somewhat ironically, the only person who remained unimpressed was Royce himself, who insisted that even the short-wheelbase Phantom II was irritatingly oversized for his personal use. He instructed his design team to develop a more compact version.
The Phantom II Continental was born. By the time of Royce’s death in 1933, rivals were coming, in the form of Cadillac, Lincoln and Packard, with Straight-8, V12 and even V16-cylinder engines, rapidly eclipsing the large-horsepower, in-line six-cylinder Royce used.
Given the company’s proven experience in designing and building aero-engines, it was inevitable that the next Phantom would have a V12 engine. It arrived in 1936. The new motor was more compact, allowing a shorter bonnet and larger passenger compartment.
Most importantly, it delivered a significant increase in power – up now to 134kW in later variants. Comfort was further improved with independent front wheel suspension. Phantom III was suited to all manner of coachwork styles too.
When war broke out in 1939, Rolls-Royce ceased all motor car production, and when peace returned in 1945, the company was ready to make its vehicles less complex, easier to service, much less expensive to produce and able to use common parts.
Its solution was the Rationalised Range, which debuted in 1946 with the Silver Wraith. Its new straight-6-cylinder engine was a backward step from the V12 engine of Phantom III, but relevant in tough times.
The Phantom story might well have ended there, but for two serendipitous events. Engineers produced four experimental EX cars with a Straight-8 engine. One of these, fitted with a Park Ward & Co. limousine body, was officially named the Silver Phantom.
A smaller, lighter saloon version, known as the Scalded Cat, followed. At the same time, the Royal household was seeking to replace its ageing fleet of Daimlers. In 1950, Rolls-Royce was asked to supply a formal limousine to serve the Crown.
It gladly produced a ‘one-off’ straight-8 long-chassis limousine with coachwork by H. J. Mulliner. During manufacture, the car was given the codename Maharajah, and remains in active service at the Royal Mews under that name to this day.
When requests for similar motor cars followed from other Royalty and Heads of State, Rolls-Royce was happy to oblige. The company decided it would be fitting that for such prestigious cars, it would resurrect the Phantom name.
Over the next seven years, the marque produced just 18 examples of Phantom IV, including a second motor car for the Royal Mews, a landaulette named Jubilee, delivered in 1954. in 1959 it launched the Phantom V.
Two motor cars, known as Canberra I and Canberra II, were built for Royal service, featuring transparent Perspex cupolas over the rear compartments and concealed lighting to better view the occupants on formal occasions.
After 13 years and 832 examples, the Phantom V had received enough technical upgrades to be designated as Phantom VI. As with all its forebears, this new iteration prioritised comfort, with separate air conditioning systems for the front and rear compartments.
Most of the 374 examples were limousines. The last Phantom VI, the final body-on-chassis model the brand would ever produce save for the Sweptail in 2017), was delivered to the Sultan of Brunei in 1993.
When the marque was relaunched at Goodwood, a ‘Phantom-type’ model quickly emerged as the natural and obvious choice for its inaugural motor car. The design concept included signature elements inherited from previous generations.
These included a long wheelbase with the front wheels well to the fore and a minimal front overhang of the bodywork, a long bonnet comprised of a massive expanse of metal along the side, and a rising sweep of the door edge towards the front windscreen pillars.
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ first design director of the Goodwood era, Ian Cameron, formed a specific team to create the interior for the much-anticipated new model. Their remit was to express the ambience of past Phantoms in a totally up-to-date way.
At one minute past midnight on 1 January 2003, the first Phantom VII was handed over to its new owner. Unlike every version that had gone before, it was built entirely in-house, with spaceframe bodywork, to a single design.
In one important sense, however, it retained a link with its heritage, in that every motor car was hand-built by a team of skilled craftspeople. Over its 13-year lifespan, Phantom VII cemented Rolls-Royce as the world’s pre-eminent super luxury motor manufacturer.
But just like their predecessors, Rolls-Royce’s designers and engineers understood that perfection is a moving target: that Phantom was never ‘finished’. In 2017, the Phantom VIII was born.
This was the first Rolls-Royce to be built on the Architecture of Luxury, an advance on the all-aluminium spaceframe used on Phantom VII, and designed to underpin every future motor car produced at Goodwood.
Phantom VIII was designed to be the ultimate canvas for bespoke commissions, and is the only model to feature “Gallery” – an uninterrupted swathe of glass that runs the full width of the fascia. Behind it, the client can display a commissioned work of art or design.
This singular focus has made Phantom the subject of some of the most technically ambitious and challenging projects ever undertaken by the marque, with multiple one-of-one creations that are not only unique, but will never be repeated.
It’s a nod to the very first Phantoms that were individually hand-built for their owners. As a result, for 100 years, the name has been the pinnacle of the Rolls-Royce brand, recognised as the grandest and most impressive offering possible.
Through all its eight generations, the Phantom has never been compromised by existing engineering orthodoxy, fleeting trends or development costs. From Henry Royce’s original New Phantom to today’s Phantom VIII, the essential purpose remains the same.
That is, to build a motor car that offers owner-drivers and passengers alike the most comfortable, satisfying experience available in the world at that moment in time – the unassailable pinnacle of luxury and motoring excellence.
