Rolls-Royce is giving the next-generation Ghost sedan a minimalist design that taps into customers’ new-found desire for a less flashy "post-opulent" look, the company said.
The second-generation Ghost replaces a model that since its debut in 2009 has become the best-selling model in the ultraluxury brand’s 116-year history.
The new Ghost, which will slot below the larger Phantom in Rolls-Royce’s lineup, will be launched in September, the company said.
Rolls-Royce is teasing the car’s unveiling with a series of animated shorts starting with design.
The company began work on the car six years ago, starting with an investigation of what customers were looking for.
"We found that these clients are showing a marked tendency toward luxury objects that celebrate reduction and restraint -- that don’t shout, but rather, whisper," CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös said in the statement.
The Ghost was designed with restraint in mind.
"We wanted something pure and clean," designer Henry Cloke said in the animated movie. "We removed all unnecessary design, deleted shutlines and pursued a minimal aesthetic, while ensuring the new Ghost was unmistakably a Rolls-Royce."
Cloke said bodies had to be hand-welded to achieve the effect Rolls-Royce wanted, while the aluminum architecture shared with the Phantom sedan and Cullinan SUV was "completely reconfigured."
Cloke, who is credited with the design of the Ghost in the absence of a Rolls-Royce design director, said that the team discovered during the process that "creating perfect simplicity is really, really complex."
Rolls-Royce ended production of the Ghost in 2019. Deliveries of the new model will start globally in the first quarter of 2021, the company said.
Rolls-Royce, owned by BMW Group, posted record U.S. sales of 5,152 cars in 2019 fueled by demand for the Cullinan. The automaker sold 120 vehicles in Canada last year, up from 108 in 2018.
