British Luxury Made By Germans
The always amazing Jalopnik looks under the hood of the new BMW-built Rolls-Royce Phantom. And they search the trunk and under the seats and up in the wheel wells...
“For generations, Rolls-Royces were the automotive equivalent of a white wedding dress. Pretty, but who you trying to fool, honey? Yes, the badge said Rolls-Royce, but wink-wink, nudge, nudge, Elton John covered his in rhinestones, but come on — they weren't very good cars. Sure, we'd love to get our mits on a Phantom IV. Or better yet, a Camargue! But even then you're talking 189 hp from a 6.75-liter V8 coupled to a GM 3-speed autobox. Woo frigging hoo. And at least the Camargue was kinda nifty looking. Most Rollers are frumpy, bulgy looking things. But they had a lot of leather and walnut and wool and odds are you weren't doing the driving anyhow, so did it really matter that the emperor was wearing little more than a pair of speedos? To BMW it did.Read the entire article, here.
Flush with cash and hubris BMW purchased Rolls-Royce in 2003 and set about modernizing the moribund brand. Volkswagen had gobbled up Bentley and was planning to stick two turbochargers into a 2-door Phaeton and call it a Continental. Mercedes was busy breathing life back into the Maybach name with an elongated S-Class fitted with... twin-turbos. BMW then had every reason and right to stick a massive grill on their 7-Series, plumb in a couple of turbochargers and pray that the NBA takes a liking to their new Rolls. Only they didn't. Instead, BMW took a chance.”
1 comment:
Friend of mine worked as telecoms engineer in Texas for two years, and he told me of a conversation he had on cars whilst he was there.
It went something like this:
Texan “The trouble with you Europeans is that you can’t make decent cars”
Scotsman: “What do you mean, we make loads of cars”
Texan: “Yea but there rubbish, not a patch on American makes such as BMW, Ferrari, Mercedes and Honda’s”
The guy wouldn’t have it that these were foreign cars made in the US.
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