Baby Phantom targets Bentley

There's a new arrival on the way in the Rolls-Royce family!

This is the best look yet at the new luxury saloon, and when it goes on sale here in 2009, it will provide Rolls-Royce with a long-awaited baby brother to its Phantom limousine.

Following recent news from parent company BMW that the project had got the green light, we can bring you all the details on the exciting new model, which will go head-to-head with Bentley’s Continental Flying Spur.

The newcomer is set to be priced at around £150,000, and will prove crucial to securing the future of the famous luxury car manufacturer. Rolls currently sells around 800 Phantoms each year. But it plans to more than triple output at its plant in Good­wood, West Sussex, by producing around 3,000 examples of the new model annually from next year.

Engineers are well underway dev­eloping the car, and our spies have caught this BMW 7-Series-based prototype undergoing trials in Germany. At first glance, the test mule may not look like anything out of the ordinary. But with its stretched bonnet, long wheelbase and flared arches, it’s clear that this is a very special model. Although the new Rolls-Royce shares its chassis with the next-generation 7-Series, it will be significantly bigger than the forthcoming BMW flagship.