Almost 100 years from the time when Henry Royce took his first car on its
trial run, BMW produces its first Rolls-Royce.
"We want to be the
king of the premium segment. And if you are king, you need a crown."
-BMW board member Michael Ganal
At a
launch party held Friday, January 3, 2003, at its $100 million Rolls-Royce
factory in Goodwood, England, BMW announced the new Rolls-Royce, called
the Phantom:
With its traditional grille and square face, the new Rolls-Royce Phantom
certainly looks like the archetypal English car. But the chassis, body,
driveline and other key mechanical components of the car are sourced from
BMW AG factories in Germany.
Final assembly occurs at the energy-efficient Goodwood factory in southern
England. The low-rise plant, designed to blend into the rolling landscape,
will feature 400,000 trees and shrubs and what is said to be the largest
biomass roof in Europe, with green plants growing out of the shingles. At
Goodwood, workers paint the bodies, craft the leather and wood veneer
trim, and perform final assembly.
The car was designed in a secret studio in a former bank in London but
engineered mainly in Germany. BMW called on a former Rover Group engineer,
who is British, to head the car project. Tim Leverton was a body
engineer who became product director of the luxury and full-sized vehicle
platform for the Land Rover brand when it was owned by BMW in the
mid-1990s. He was appointed chief engineer of the Rolls-Royce vehicle
project RR01 in April 1999.
Rolls-Royce expects to sell an average of 1,000 units a year over the 10-
to 12-year life cycle of the Phantom. Forty percent of them will be in
North America, Rolls CEO Tony Gott says. Gott, a 46-year-old engineer, is
steeped in the luxury-car business. He had worked at Rolls-Royce and
Bentley since the mid-1980s, rising to chief executive. In November 2001,
he suddenly quit the operation then run by Volkswagen AG. His subsequent
appointment as chief executive of BMW's Project Rolls-Royce - which is how
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars was known until New Year's Day of 2003 - provided
BMW with a well-qualified English front person.
BMW has appointed 70 dealers worldwide, including 25 in the United States
and one in Canada. Many are established Rolls-Royce dealers who sold the
cars when Rolls-Royce was owned by Vickers and later Volkswagen.
