Rolls-Royce showed off the all-new 2021 Ghost, the brand’s “entry-level” luxury sedan (ha!), at the beginning of September. It’s a cleaner, statelier design that doesn’t reinvent the Ghost concept so much as hone it to a sharp edge. Built on the brand’s aluminum spaceframe chassis, the luxury sedan now has a platform befitting its station, too. Now Rolls-Royce is showing off the extended wheelbase version—fittingly enough, called the Ghost Extended.
And extended, it is. The wheelbase swells by six inches, and the overall length by seven. There’s a weight penalty to grow your Ghost, but it doesn’t appear to faze the sedan at all. The 102 pounds of additional weight involved in the stretch fails to affect the manufacturer-provided acceleration or top speed figures, which hold steady at 4.8 seconds to 60 mph and 155 mph, the latter electronically limited.
Credit that to the stoutness of the powertrain. The twin-turbo V-12 is an absolute unit, pumping out 563 hp and a formidable 627 lb-ft of torque. It carries over from the regular Ghost and is perfectly suited for new Ghost Extended duties unchanged.
Rolls-Royce notes that its customers do not want a car that feels like an obviously stretched version of a regular wheelbase model, so extra attention was paid to cloaking the wheelbase extension. And a heaping of extra rear-seat luxury comes in the form of the optional Serenity Seat, which reclines to provide a business-jet-like experience. Of course, there’s a champagne chiller between those rear seats, which can chill the bubbly to the optimum serving temperature as determined by an esteemed wine expert.
It goes without saying that the extended Rolls-Royces are aimed at customers who prefer to be driven, but there doesn’t seem to be any downside to choosing the longer model. Choose your own wheelbase adventure, it seems.
