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Man Maths: Rolls-Royce Phantom

1 month ago

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Writer:

Andrew Frankel | Ti co-founder

Date:

7 September 2024

Know what not quite fifty grand buys you these days? A top of the range Toyota bZ4X. And if you’re scratching your head about now, it’s a front-drive electric crossover SUV which is no better, or worse, than the description sounds. Or you could have a Rolls-Royce. And not some scruffy old Shadow or, worse, a Spirit, but a flagship Phantom, built with BMW’s money and within the last 20 years. Tempting, huh? But this wouldn’t be Man Maths if it wasn’t.

The ad somewhat leapt out of me during one of those moments where, desperate to do anything that might just about be characterised at work but couldn’t feel less like it, I found myself indulging in my number one displacement activity and wandering through the classifieds. And there it was: a 2005 Rolls-Royce Phantom, recently wrapped in white (goodness knows what its original colour was/is) with a blood red interior, yours for just £49,995 before you’ve turned up with a briefcase full of used readies amounting to a couple of grand less and invited the vendor to take it or leave it…

These cars are incredible, and made that way because BMW knew it had just one chance to establish the brand’s credibility at its 2003 relaunch after decades of being run into the ground by its previous owner. Simply to be good was not good enough. It had to be a landmark, both for Rolls-Royce and cars in general. And so it proved. I remember going to its launch in Santa Barbara and knowing I had never sat in a car with ride and refinement to touch it. I thought it looked a bit cartoonish with that enormous Parthenon grille but when it came to doing those things you wanted a Rolls-Royce to do, it took your expectations and clubbed them over the hills and far away.

This or a modern Toyota EV...?

I know two people who owned them from new, one very famous and another you may never have heard of, and they both said exactly the same thing to me about it: they loved the car and what it did so much it was worth putting up with all the attention it garnered, which both hated.

So what’s stopping you? Well I know a third person who bought one second hand and despite being well-resourced was promptly bled white by the bills. But this is Man Maths and we don’t want to be inconvenienced by anything as tedious as the truth, do we? Because if we did, we might dwell a little too long on the fact this one has done 155,000 miles, has had (at least) eight owners and a line in the description that says ‘needs a little TLC’, and run as fast as our little legs will carry us in the other direction.

Far better to bask in the reassurance of its full Rolls-Royce service history until two years ago and that it’s spent at least some of its life as a chauffeur car.

How brave are you feeling? Me? Not even close, but then again I’m afraid of moths so am probably not the right man to be asking. You may feel differently. You may feel that wafting around in a V12 Roller for the same money as a refrigerator-powered Toyota is too tempting a proposition to miss. And if the bills do start to get unmanageable, you can always buy some ribbons, a peaked hat, dig a few tin cans out of the recycling and offset at least some of the expense driving newlyweds away from their nuptials…

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