Published:
13 April 2012Ostensibly, the Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupé shares most of its underpinnings with the saloon and Drophead. But of the two, it’s the convertible with which it shares more. Its rear-hinged doors are the same, for example, as is the bodywork from the nose to the A-pillars.
From the doors backwards, things are rather different. The aluminium panels are draped over a welded aluminium skeleton like other Phantoms, but the rear bodywork kicks up behind the driver’s seat from where an aluminium roof is formed forwards, meeting the steel header rail above the windscreen not entirely smoothly if (as in our test car) the two are the same colour. It works rather better if the windscreen surround and bonnet are finished in the optional brushed steel.
Otherwise, rather like the saloon, the Phantom Coupé is an imposing piece of design; there’s no denying its presence. At 5609mm long, it is only 225mm shorter than the saloon, and at 1592mm and 1987mm respectively, it gives very little away in height or width.
