2011 Rolls Royce Ghost, Black/black, Only 8k Miles, Rear Theater Pkg,$301k Msrp! on 2040-cars

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BMW shuffles chairs in its design department

BMW Group has made some changes to its design team since August 1, and has shuffled top personnel to different positions at BMW Design, Mini Design and Rolls-Royce.
The BMW Design team led by Karim Habib (middle, right) gains a new head of Exterior Design in Domagoj Dukec (right), who has worked for the exterior design team since 2010 and shaped the Concept Active Tourer.
Oliver Heilmer (left), who has worked for BMW's interior design unit since 2000 and designed the 5 Series interior, replaces Marc Girard as head of Interior Design BMW Automobiles. Marc Girard goes to manage BMW's subsidiary design group, BMW DesignworksUSA.

Rolls-Royce Wraith revealed, ready to battle Bentley

Bentley may have rounded out the redesign of its Continental line of cars with the new Flying Spur four-door's debut at this week's Geneva Motor Show, but Rolls-Royce has shown up in Switzerland with the Wraith, a GT coupe version of the Ghost sedan that moves the brand one step closer to having an answer for everything that wears a Flying B.
The Wraith's natural combatant would be Bentley's Continental GT Coupe, though as all Rollers come in orders of magnitude more expensive than their already costly competitors from Crewe, the new coupe's €245,000 initial starting price will be $100k USD more than the base price of the most expensive Continental, a GT Speed coupe.
What your CEO bonus money will get you is a 624-bhp V12 engine cranking out 590 pound-feet of torque. The sprint to 60 miles per hour will pass by in 4.4 seconds, with a unique 8-speed ZF automatic transmission snapping off shifts using a new Satellite Aided Transmission technology that works with GPS to pre-select the right gear for not only the road you're on, but the road you'll be coming up on ahead.

Work begins on new Rolls-Royce Phantom, PHEV likely

After reporting that a new Rolls-Royce Phantom would arrive sometime around 2017 in the same timeframe as a Rolls-Royce SUV, Autocar has a few more details on the next coming of the massive English sedan. Both its skin and its bones are being worked out right now, brand design head Giles Taylor telling the magazine that his team is "treading an evolutionary path" with the model, suggesting it will have "more charisma and more edge" as part of a future design language that will have "a charismatic expressiveness."
True, that gives us absolutely no indication of what the car will look like, but it seems fair to assume it will feature more curves and detailing than the present car. The long C-pillar will remain, though, the privacy it affords being "part of the Phantom recipe."
What's underneath could be more detailed as well, the report saying BMW is mulling an i3 kind of build, with an aluminum chassis supporting a carbon fiber bodyshell. Assuming production considerations and costs could be kept in line, the benefits would be a lighter car that offers more latitude with the design, easier implementation of new bodystyles and the segment's technology crown. A lighter Phantom would bring further rewards for its PHEV variant, which Autocar says is "a certainty."