2019 Rolls-royce Phantom on 2040-cars

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Rolls-Royce just unveiled the Rolls-Royce of picnic baskets

While automakers such as Cadillac and Koenigsegg have prepared debuts for full-size automobiles at Pebble Beach this week, Rolls-Royce has decided this will be the perfect occasion to unveil a picnic basket. That being said, this picnic basket is fully up to Rolls-Royce standards. And that's important because when you take your Rolls out for an al fresco lunch, a plain old blanket and an Igloo cooler simply won't do. There will only be 50 of these baskets made and they will accompany the final 50 Phantom Coupes and Drophead Coupes. Each is crafted from American walnut wood and leather that is coordinated with its accompanying car's exterior color. The basket also has milled aluminum hinges with the debut locations of the cars' concept predecessors. Because of course it does. View 11 Photos The basket is equipped with only the finest dining wares including a walnut cutting board, Rolls-Royce embroidered napkins, and stainless steel cutlery. Then there's the genuine lead crystal wine glasses and dishes with details in black paint and platinum. Obviously silver or gold wouldn't cut it. The basket will be shown at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance this weekend. So if you're there and are wondering why a picnic basket is being so prominently displayed, now you'll know. Related Video:

Bloodhound SSC fires up Rolls-Royce jet engine for land speed record

RAF ST MAWGAN, England — Fizz, whirr, shriek, pop and silence ... It took several attempts to get the Bloodhound land speed record contender started for the first time on Sept. 28. On a bright and blustery day at RAF St Mawgan in Cornwall, in southwest England, the sense of occasion was palpable, if only the damn jet engine's blades would fire up. But the Rolls-Royce 20,232-pound-thrust turbofan wasn't going to give up its virgin status as a car engine easily. As driver, RAF pilot and current land speed record-holder Andy Green explained, the Rolls EJ200 is one of the most reliable military jet engines ever, but it's never been used before in a car. "I can show you figures of its incredible reliability," he said, "but every bit of its control software expects it to be in a Typhoon [fighter aircraft], and we have to keep telling it that it is in an aircraft, which needs some quick-footed work on the software." This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Quick-footed indeed, as right there on the RAF St Mawgan runway, without a pizza or a Coca-Cola in sight, software engineer Joe Holdsworth performed a virtuoso piece of recoding on the engine's software to persuade it not to shut down in alarm at some low-level electrical interference it simply doesn't see in its normal aeronautical environment. Then, with just 20 minutes left of the team's running permission window, the remote jet starter cart shrieked, its air-delivery pipe bulged like an elephant's trunk blocked with a coconut and the massive turbofan spun, popped, emitted a polite ball of flame and smoked into life. No cheers or high-fives here; this is after all a British team. But there was clear delight from the 20 engineers attendant on Bloodhound. After three successful starts, Wing Commander Green leapt from the cockpit and Mark Chapman, chief engineer, pronounced that he was well satisfied and that the sight of a jet car surging gently against its arrestor cable and wheel chocks was awesome. "We knew it was going to take a couple of starts to get it running," said Chapman, who explained why the engine appeared so smoky at first. "This is an inhibited engine, so it was tested a couple of months ago at Rolls-Royce and basically filled with corrosion inhibitor, and you've got to blow that all through at the start.

Rolls-Royce Ghost Series II headed to Geneva

Rolls-Royce is not a brand that replaces its vehicles with any great frequency. It expands its lineup, sure: what started with just the Phantom saloon has since grown to include extended wheelbase models, coupes and convertibles, not to mention the addition of the Ghost, followed by the Ghost EWB and the Wraith fastback. What Rolls does to keep its models fresh, however, is spruce them up with a Series II.
The Phantom family underwent just such a treatment a couple of years ago, and now Goodwood appears to be preparing to do the same with the Ghost. At least, that is, going by this teaser image it released with only the line, "After five years as the cornerstone of Rolls-Royce's sustainable growth success worldwide, this mid-life update is a showcase for the most recent technological advances from Rolls-Royce enrobed in a considered exterior design revision."
The arrival of the Ghost Series II at the Geneva Motor Show this year would put it significantly ahead of schedule for when Rolls updated the Phantom. That model arrived in 2003 and was followed by the Series II in 2012, giving the original a nine-year run virtually unchanged. The Ghost, however, only reached production in 2010, so introducing a Series II now would shorten that lifecycle to just four years.