The designers had a tough time getting the right shade of Black On The Ghost
It seems that the ‘Black Badge’ versions of Rolls Royce cars are having the best sales in the Asia Pacific region. Even a few years ago when a private importer had a dozen or so Black Badge rollers on sale in Malaysia, they were taken up much faster over a regular roller.
Customers with this purchasing power, just want something unique to ride in and the price is really no matter and the sellers are happy to accommodate their needs.
This time around, Rolls Royce Cars Malaysia has imported in for the very first time a Black Badge Ghost and it comes with a price tag that starts from RM1.8 million (about RM4 million after local taxes are paid).
Which means, the prospective Malaysian owner can sit down with the sales person and take their time to decide what kind of cabin material, color and ‘feel’ they want (where there are 44,000 possible combinations) and even choose the exterior color of their new ‘blacked’ Ghost.
At the end of the session, the typical Rolls Royce Ghost buyer (just like the Cullinan Black Badge buyer) would have optioned their car to RM2.2 million or so before duties and deliveries which means a final full price of past RM4.5 million in Malaysia.
However, the badges MUST be black!
Meanwhile, since the global launch of this Rolls Royce Ghost twelve months ago, it has become one of the fastest-selling products in the brands’ history, representing more than 3,500 buyers worldwide.
So, how black are the badges? To create what is the industry’s darkest black, 45kg of paint is atomised and applied to an electrostatically charged body in white before being oven dried.
The car then receives two layers of clear coat before being hand-polished by a team of four craftsmen to produce the marque’s signature high-gloss piano finish.
At between three and five hours in duration, this operation is entirely unknown in mass production, creating an intensity simply unattainable elsewhere in the automotive industry. It is this depth of darkness that serves as the perfect canvas for clients to add a high-contrast, hand-painted Coach-line, which has done much to create the Black Badge ‘black and neon’ aesthetic that has come to characterize this vivid family of Rolls-Royce motor cars.
Instead of simply painting these components, a specific chrome electrolyte is introduced to the traditional chrome plating process that is co-deposited on the stainless-steel substrate, darkening the finish. Its final thickness is just one micrometer, which is around one hundredth of the width of a human hair. Each of these components is precision-polished by hand to achieve a mirror-black chrome finish before it is fitted to the car.
The exterior treatment resolves with a Bespoke 21-inch composite wheel-set. Designed in the Black Badge house style and reserved for Black Badge Ghost, the barrel of each wheel is made up of 22 layers of carbon fibre laid on three axes, then folded back on themselves at the outer edges of the rim, forming a total of 44 layers of carbon fibre for greater strength.
A 3D-forged aluminium hub is bonded to the rim using aerospace-grade titanium fasteners and finished with the marque’s hallmark Floating Hubcap, ensuring the Double R monogram remains upright at all times.
Then a lightly tinted lacquer is applied to protect the finish but still allow clients to observe the technical complexity of the wheel’s unique carbon fibre construction.
So, what is under the hood of this Ghost? There is Rolls-Royce developed twin-turbocharged 6.75-litre V12 engine creating a total output of 600ps and delivering a massive 900Nm of torque.
As with all models in the marque’s Black Badge portfolio, the ‘Low’ button situated on the gear selection stalk unlocks Black Badge Ghost’s full suite of technologies. This is asserted by the amplification of the motor car’s engine through an entirely new exhaust system.
All 900Nm of torque is available from just 1700rpm and, once underway in Low Mode, gearshift speeds are increased by 50 percent when the throttle is depressed to 90 percent, delivering Black Badge Ghost’s abundant power reserves with dramatic immediacy.
The standstill to 100km/h time is reached in 4.7 seconds (somewhat slower to its lesser sibling, the BMW 760Li twin turbo V12 which accelerates at 3.7 seconds) and the top speed is tapped at a maximum of 250km/h.
In case you didn’t know, BMW owns Rolls Royce Motor Cars and shares a lot of its technology with the iconic British luxury car.
