Rolls-Royce Reveals Super-Luxury Consumer Insights That Informed New Ghost

By Bennett Oghifo

Rolls-Royce has revealed the super-luxury consumer insights that inspired the New Ghost.

More than six years ago, a team of luxury intelligence specialists, designers, engineers and craftspeople assembled to begin development of the new Rolls-Royce Ghost.

As with the first Goodwood Ghost, launched in 2009, this collective would work obsessively to ensure that New Ghost would hold its own place in the Rolls-Royce portfolio and represent a unique set of client values.

The new development is contained in a statement released in Nigeria by Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Lagos, owned by Coscharis Motors Plc., the exclusive franchise owner for Rolls-Royce vehicles sales and services in Nigeria. It currently has showrooms and workshops located both in Lagos and Abuja.

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BMW Group and is a completely separate company from Rolls-Royce plc, the manufacturer of aircraft engines and propulsion systems. Over 2,000 skilled men and women are employed at the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ head office and manufacturing plant at Goodwood, West Sussex, the only place in the world where the company’s super-luxury motor cars are hand-built.

According to the statement, since the introduction of Ghost, which became the most successful Rolls-Royce in history, the marque’s unique proximity its clients afforded the team access to a large body of information. It revealed the divergent interests, opinions and changing taste patterns within Ghost clients’ appreciation of luxury. This primary research allowed them to create a product myopically focused on the requirements of these remarkable men and women. These insights informed the designers, engineers and craftspeople at Rolls-Royce as they moved into the development phase of the highly progressive new Ghost.

As with all primary research conducted by the marque’s specialists, these experts were asked to present their findings. In this short film, Rolls-Royce shares some of these insights to demonstrate the underlying substance of the highly progressive new Ghost ahead of its official unveiling in autumn this year.

The series begins with Rolls-Royce Designer Henry Cloke, who identified an emerging aesthetic defined by purity and minimalism, internally named Post Opulence. Cloke says, “We found that Ghost clients sought objects that are effortlessly, almost instinctively exceptional. They rejected busy details and flash gimmicks, instead seeking extremely high quality, thoughtfully designed pieces that stand up to the most intense scrutiny. This philosophy defined new Ghost’s minimalist design treatment.”

The marque elected to use the increasingly popular medium of animated illustrations to convey these insights. Renowned illustrator, Charlie Davis, was chosen to cohesively and beautifully represent these findings in a fashion that befits the highly progressive new Ghost.

In addition to these insights presented in animation form, a series of five podcasts have been launched that reveal the marque’s findings, as well as insights into the underlying material and engineering substance of new Ghost in long form. Hosted by Johanna Agerman Ross, Curator of Twentieth Century and Contemporary Furniture and Product Design at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.