Filthy Rich: What exactly does one get when spending the price of an average house on what may be the world's best luxury car?
The very rich, as F. Scott Fitzgerald noted, are very different from you and me. Most of us would look at the $346,650 Rolls-Royce Phantom and the $250,230 Bentley Arnage R and wonder how you can spend as much on a car as you could on the average house. The very rich, however, merely wonder where their checkbooks are. The overwhelming majority of Phantoms and Arnages sold in this country, you see, are bought and paid for with cold, hard cash. Rolls-Royce moved more than 350 Phantoms in the U.S. last year and Bentley some 295 Arnages. That's somewhere north of $180 million of very rich folks' loose change.
The very rich are like you and me in one way, however: They like their cars. The average Arnage owner also has seven to 10 other vehicles, and at least a quarter of them have a second Bentley in their fleet. With links to Le Mans that date back to the 1920s and the development of the charismatic, defiantly British Turbo R sedans and Continental R coupes in the 1990s, a Bentley seems the logical choice for the very rich car guy. But the launch of the BMW designed and engineered Phantom has created a whole new generation of Rolls-Royce enthusiasts: Virtually all the orders for the first two years' of production of the forthcoming Corniche convertible (rumored to be priced at more than $400,000) are from existing Phantom owners. About one-third of Phantom owners have already traded their first for a second one, and a few are even on their third. A number have two Phantoms. "Most of our owners have three to five homes, so why bother moving the car from one home to another?" says a Rolls-Royce spokesman with the impeccable logic only serious money can buy.
The point of all this is that judging the Rolls-Royce Phantom or the Bentley Arnage R by the criteria that matter to most of us is, well, pointless. It's not simply that both cars occupy a huge chunk of real estate on the road and suck gas like it's going out of style--we mere wage slaves can experience all that for the price of a new Suburban. (For the record, the gas-guzzler tax is $3000 on the Phantom and $5400 on the Arnage R.) Understanding what these cars are about means looking beyond the hardware to figure out exactly what all that money actually buys you.
The hardware is important, however, because it defines the key differences between these cars. The Bentley Arnage dates back to a car launched in 1998, though since Volkswagen took over the storied British marque (see sidebar) it's been a work in progress. Changes over the past eight years have included substantial revisions to the suspension, steering, and brakes and cosmetic tweaks. VW even ditched the BMW-sourced 4.4-liter, quad-cam, twin-turbo V-8 of the original Arnage in favor of an updated twin-turbo version of the venerable 6.75-liter pushrod V-8 that's powered cars from Crewe for almost 50 years. In our Arnage R, it has 400 horsepower.
BMW's Rolls-Royce Phantom was designed from the wheels up between 1998 and 2002, and, as a result, its imposing, neoclassical styling belies a car that's much more state-of-the-moment under the skin. Those panels are hung on an immense aluminum space-frame structure, for example, and while there's also a 6.75-liter engine under the hood as in the Bentley, this one has 12 cylinders, 48 valves, four camshafts, and 453 horsepower. The Phantom has a six-speed automatic, compared with the Bentley's soon-to-be-outdated four-speed (see sidebar). And although over 19 feet long, 6.5 feet wide, and 5.0 feet tall--the Phantom is probably the only car in the world that makes an Arnage look petite--it weighs just 80 pounds more than the Bentley (and about 20 pounds less than a Range Rover) and boasts perfect 50/50 weight distribution.
The Arnage feels like a much older car the moment you slip behind the steering wheel. Although more than 3.0 inches longer overall than the newer Continental Flying Spur, its driver's seat doesn't slide back far enough for tall drivers, and the high H-point means they could be scraping the headliner in a sunroof-equipped version. The warm sheen of wood veneers, the bright glitter of chrome accents, and the rich tang of leather transcend the usual luxury-car cliches because they're all so beautifully done. But then you notice the cheap graphics of the warning lamp cluster in the center of the dash, the visible VW switchgear, and the hunt-and-peck ergonomics.