And then there were two.

A few weeks ago we brought you news of the Bentley Brooklands. A full-size, ultra luxury, four-seat coupe. It had the market place to itself, as big coupes of this ilk have disappeared from the market in the last decade. But we did say to look out for the Rolls Royce answer. And here it is.

The Rolls Royce Phantom Coupe is a dead-ringer for the 101EX concept Rolls Royce showed at Geneva in 2006, even down to the brushed steel bonnet and slitty headlights. And it’s at Geneva, in March, that Rolls Royce will be officially unveiling the Coupe.

The Phantom has taken it’s section of the market as its own. It is so on the money in every way it makes the Maybach look pointless. The Coupe, stunning and special though it seems, may have more of a fight on its hands with the Bentley Brooklands. We’ll see.

Based pretty much on the gorgeous Drophead, the Coupe keeps the same split tailgate arrangement at the back. Somewhere to sit at the Polo Match. Inside it’s much the same as the Drophead- and it doesn’t get much better than that - plus a roof lining that thinks it’s a Planetarium! Power, as always, comes from the faithful 6.75 V12, in this guise chucking out 450bhp and the usual buckets full of torque.

But there are some significant changes over the Drophead. The whole car is, according to Rolls Royce, the stiffest they’ve ever built, and the suspension has been tweaked to give a much more dynamic response. That, together with liberal use of aluminium in the construction, should make the Coupe shake its skirts in a way Rolls Royces just don’t. It could actually be great fun to drive. Oh, and you’ll get further on a tank. But not because it’s more frugal, but because Rolls Royce have put in a bigger tank!

I do like the Drophead a lot, and the Coupe promises to be great fun to drive as well. Production is due to start at Goodwood in the summer, so you should see the Rolls Royce Phantom Coupe for sale later this year. Can’t wait.

A black Rolls Royce Phantom sits on my drive. Good Lord, it’s big! Over 19′ long, and a good 6′6″ wide (with the mirrors, to be fair) taking up as much room as the skip lorry that left half an hour ago (my house resembles a cross between a building site and Steptoe’s yard - the joys of renovating a run-down Victorian house). But it is impressive; menacing even, in black.

Where do you start to test a car like this? Shouldn’t I be looking for a major occasion to arrive at? Perhaps get a driver, and waft imperiously to the gates of Buckingham Palace (although I think our Royal Family - with the exception of Prince Charles - is more interested in ancient Land Rovers than the Phantom). But then - inspiration! I’ll be Alan Sugar for the day!

In a previous life I used to drive every day from my home in Essex to London. I know, I should have taken the train, but if I can do it in a car, I do. Whatever ‘it’ is. So every morning, at 6.30am, I’d set off for town. But traffic jams on main routes hold no appeal, so the country roads for me for as far as possible. More miles, but much, much more interesting. And one person I almost always saw on my daily rush in to London was Alan Sugar, that scourge of apprentices (or wannabe celebs - depending on your point of view) wafting in his ‘Roller’ in the opposite direction on his way to Amstrad in Brentwood (whatever you may believe from The Apprentice, I can assure you that the Amstrad HQ is not a glitzy Docklands block, but a rather more prosaic, boring brick slab by the railway station in Brentwood!). And I could set my watch by the site of AMS 1. I knew whether I was running late or bang on time. Sir Alan’s chauffeur was obviously a meticulous time-keeper.

The Rolls Royce Phantom was designed to attract ‘Old Money’. And it’s succeeded brilliantly. I know, Alan Sugar’s not exactly old money. You don’t achieve that status when you start out flogging aerials on Romford Market (oh the joys of our supposedly non-existent class system). But it was important for Rolls Royce not to alienate their existing clientèle, and it’s obviously worked as Sir Alan has stuck with the marque (unlike his US counterpart, Donald Trump, who has opted for the Maybach - so new money dahlink!).

So I settle myself in to the beautifully appointed cabin, and get ready to re-create my commuting route of ten years ago. The doors close with a reassuring ‘clud’. A good noise. And the cabin has everything you expect. Gorgeous chrome ‘organ-stops’. Nothing so brash as a rev counter, but a ‘Power Reserve’ meter. The ubiquitous clock (because the only thing you can hear in a Rolls Royce is the clock!). But the clock’s gone all Buck Rogers, as it rotates to reveal the i-drive when you need it. But I think I’ll keep that closed. It would spoil the ambience. After all, even the seat controls are hidden under a leather swathed cover, so it would be sacrilege to have the ‘toys’ on view.

A push on the white start button, and the massive V12 jumps in to life. A prod on the accelerator and we’re away. Quietly. Without fuss. It really is damn quiet in here. Even quieter than the Lexus we had at the weekend. But this is a different class. A different class to anything. The first 15 miles are country roads. Not the Phantom’s natural turf. But it handles it very well. Get enthusiastic and she does roll a little, but only a little. And you can drive quickly. Just set-up the corners properly and the Phantom glides round. No fuss. No drama. An open stretch of road and a prod on the accelerator and we’re doing 80. No effort, we’re just there. A few startled faces from oncoming drivers as they see the ‘Queen Mary’ fly round a corner towards them, but otherwise completely uneventful. That’s some praise for such a huge car on back roads in the Home Counties. And then in to traffic. You do sit high in the Phantom - it’s like a 4×4 up here! But no envious stares from fellow drivers and pedestrians. Just smiles. Astonishingly the Phantom doesn’t seem to invoke envy, just admiration. Perhaps people realise just how special this car is. Makes you proud to be British (even though we just bolt it together from bits BMW ship in - but what the hell, I still think of it as British!). It’s big to drive in town, but it really isn’t a problem. It’s much too nice a place to be to worry about it’s size. Yes, the Ark Royal bonnet (lots of boat analogies in here!) needs a modicum of caution, and the huge C pillars at the back mean you need to use the mirrors a lot, but you soon get used to it. Goodness, I’ve enjoyed this car. If the lottery fairies smile on me I know which car I’ll be driven in. And I won’t mind driving it on the chauffeurs day off either!

What a fine job BMW have made of this car. It oozes Rolls Royce from every beautifully finished panel. They’ve been so clever. It would have been very easy to go the route of Mercedes Benz with the Maybach. All high-tech and glitzy. But they didn’t, and thank God they didn’t. This car owns its market sector - there is no competition. It has presence. It’s finally motoring royalty again.

We get umpteen calls and emails every day (and I do mean every day - weekends, bank holidays, the lot. The petrol-head never sleeps!) from people looking for their perfect car. But one call recently made me sit up and take notice when I saw the call logs. A nice chap (because that’s what it said on the call sheet - and he was!) had called in asking if we had a Rolls Royce Drophead Coupe for sale. By the time I saw the call logs Hugh and the team had sprung in to action and sourced a beautiful Black one at a very good price, and we already had one very happy customer. But I’ve never driven one, so I was on a mission to make sure I delivered the car (not something I do every day - but this was a real exception).
In the Rolls Royce blurb for the Drophead Coupe, they make great play of its nautical infulences. Now to be honest, I’d put this down to the usual manufacturers over-hyped marketing. But when you see the car you do know what they mean. All that beautifully detailed wood at the back, and the graceful lines, really do put you in mind of those racing yachts of the 1930s. All style and polish and grace. Absolutely wonderful. Mind you, it did cross my mind it might drive like a boat! Thankfully, once I got behind the wheel, that thought soon disappeared.

Driving a customer’s car is a very different kettle of fish to playing with a test car. A test car is there to be used (and sometimes abused) to see what it is really capable of. But that is a very big no-no when you’re in a customers car (which is probably why I never go near customers cars normally!). So this was going to be a cautious drive, not ridiculously so, but always cognisant of the fact that this was a customers car (to be fair, the customer did know I was delivering the car and was OK with whatever I wanted to do - but that’s not the point).

Despite the fact that this car echoes every outdated Rolls Royce tradition, from suicide doors to the yachting teak at the back, it still conspires to be bang up to date. It is huge though and, at over eighteen feet long and six feet wide, it’s not a car to park in the multi-storey. You also sit up very high - as high as you do in a 4×4 - which does make you feel enormously superior, which of course is the point. Does it go? Does it handle? Well, yes and no. That’s a cop-out I know, but the whole style of the car doesn’t make you want to hustle along. It’s built to waft, and waft it does, with a wonderful, imperious serenity. But it will pick up its skirts and hustle. After all, it has a big V12 under the bonnet and will hit 60 in under 6 seconds, so it’s far from slow. This car is all about the big occasion. It’s not for popping to Waitrose or taking the kids to the park. It’s about arriving at the Kodak Theatre on Sunset to pick up a little gold statue, or wafting along the Croisette in Nice. This car says you’ve arrived - wherever you arrive. There is nothing else like it. Thank goodness Rolls Royce make it. The world’s a better place for it.