Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII | PH Used Buying Guide

What, if anything, goes wrong with the best car in the world? Time to find out...

By Tony Middlehurst / Sunday, 24 August 2025 / Loading comments

Key considerations

Available for £200,000
6.7-litre V12 petrol twin turbo, rear-wheel drive
The best car of its type you can buy, no question
Fantastically comfortable, refined and fast
Wonderfully assembled from high-quality materials
Likely to be the last ICE super-limo to wear the R-R badge

This time round we’re looking at the Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII, launched in 2017 and hand-assembled at the Goodwood plant for sales starting in early 2018. For some, the Phantom represents the ultimate high-water mark of luxury motoring. Not the sort of transport most of us will be shortlisting any time soon, admittedly, but on this long holiday weekend let’s have a bit of fun sneaking a peek into an alien lifestyle.

The Phantom nameplate is the car world’s longest-lived model name, having been around for 100 years this year. The Roman numerals VIII stand for eight, telling us that this is only the eighth generation in all that time. This latest (and still current) model was special, though. It was intended to serve as a jump-off point for all future Royces, to support a new level of refinement and dynamics, and to underpin the company’s standing as a luxury house in the business of cars.

It’s hard to believe that the VIII’s predecessor, the Phantom VII, came out in 2003. Today, in mid-2025, you can pick up a high-mileage VII for as little (relatively speaking) as £45k. That seems comically cheap considering the humongous amount of car you’re getting, but Rolls-Royce dealers will happily introduce you to millionaire-level maintenance costs if you ever have to take it in for any mending. If you’re just going to chuck a leggy VII straight into your wedding limo/stag night fleet and get as much out of it as you can before a bankruptcy-sized bill arrives, fair enough, but private buyers venturing blindly into this end of the Phantom market need to tread very carefully.

The 2017-on Phantom VIII is an entirely different bucket of caviar. Although it took some styling cues from the classic James Young Silver Cloud of the late 1950s, it was built on an entirely new, mainly aluminium, spaceframe platform exclusive to Rolls-Royce, one that was futureproofed to accept different powertrains and designed to underpin next-generation Rollers like the Cullinan, Wraith and the new Ghost.

The Phantom VIII was the most technologically advanced Rolls-Royce ever. The electronic architecture designed for the car was the largest single component ever created not just by Rolls-Royce, but by the entire BMW Group. Suspension was by air with continuous electronic adjustment and self-levelling, the main hardware being double wishbones at the front and a multilink rear. Four-wheel steering was added to boost dynamism at high speeds and ease city parking at low speeds – though we’re not sure if the turning circle passed the Savoy Hotel test.

The VIII’s model-unique BMW N74B68 6.7 litre V12 engine was essentially the same as the VII’s but with the notable addition of two turbochargers set up to provide easy, irrepressible shove at Knightsbridge revs.

Rolls-Royces these days come with a four-year Ownership Package that includes warranty and servicing. Taking out the R-R Service Inclusive package will extend your cover for up to five additional years, making your outgoings more predictable. The main downside of an VIII over a VII is that your major outgoings will be shifted to the front end instead, and they will indeed be major. Used VIIIs have only recently dropped below £200k. That will get you a 2018 car with at least 30,000 miles on it. Jump forward to a 2022-on Series II Phantom VIII with ‘light-touch visual and aesthetic enhancements in line with client requests and feedback’ (new wheels, a new grille/DRL garnish, revised headlights) and the price for that 30k-mile car will rise to nearer £300k.

Cars from 2024 and 2025 with under 5,000 miles and big specifications can easily pass the £400k mark, not far short of the basic new car price in 2025 of just under £430k – but of course if you’re the first owner that base invoice price is only the start. Even a relatively unimaginative package of add-ons will effortlessly double your outlay. Many Phantom VIII buyers sail past the £1 million mark.

Let’s assume that you want an VIII, that you’re nicely minted but you’re also financially careful enough to steer well clear of an R-R new car showroom. That makes you a niche buyer, but you would be well within your rights to question the point of blowing half a million or more on a new Phantom VIII when you can get an almost certainly well-maintained used one for half of that or less. Your accountant will be impressed, as long as there are no expensively dressed skeletons in the cupboard waiting to jump out and ruin your day. Could that happen, though? Let’s have a look.

SPECIFICATION | ROLLS-ROYCE PHANTOM VIII (2017-on)

Engine: 6,749cc, twin-turbo V12
Transmission: 8-speed auto, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 570@5,000rpm
Torque (lb ft): 664@1,700rpm
0-62mph (secs): 5.3
Top speed (mph): 155 (limited)
Weight (kg): 2,560
MPG (official combined): 20.3
CO2 (g/km): 318
Wheels (in): 21 or 22
Tyres: 255/45
On sale: 2018 - on
Price new (2018): £360k (£430k in 2025)
Price now (used): from £200,000

Note for reference: car weight and power data are hard to pin down with absolute certainty. For consistency, we use the same source for all our guides. We hope the data we use is right more often than it’s wrong. Our advice is to treat it as relative rather than definitive.

ENGINE & GEARBOX

Not so long ago, the Phantom VIII’s weight of 2,560kg would have caused a fair amount of outrage, but nowadays that sort of figure has now been normalised by even heavier electric vehicles. Actually, it’s not just full EVs that make the Phantom look acceptable from a weight perspective. A 530hp Range Rover P530 weighs 175kg more than the Roller.

Against that background, the power that was unleashed by the Phantom’s BMW 6.7-litre twin-turbocharged V12 more than qualified it for R-R’s iconic ‘adequate’ descriptor. It wasn’t so much the power alone, although that was hefty enough at 570hp (over 100hp more than the old naturally aspirated VII), it was the relentless surge of 664lb ft of torque delivered at just 1,700rpm, and in an incredibly smooth fashion, that caused passengers – correction, ‘patrons’ – to gasp in astonishment. It was EV-style power achieved by a conventional internal combustion engine. Quite a feat.

The slightly old-school nature of the powertrain was underlined by its high emissions figure of 318g/km and its combined fuel consumption of just 20.3mpg, dropping to 13mpg in town. Series II cars from 2022 were even more profligate with a combined figure of 18.7mpg and 345g/km of CO2, a fine example of against-the-grain snook-cocking. The fuel tank held 100 litres, giving you a potential range of 350-370 miles.

The eight-speed ZF 8HP gearbox (replacing the VII’s six-speeder) was satellite-aided, selecting ratios according to the car’s geographic location by ‘looking ahead’ to determine the nature of the upcoming terrain. R-R did consider fitting the VIII with all-wheel drive but settled for RWD. The only issues we’ve been able to uncover in the powertrain department have been occasional oil seepage from the valve covers and occasional cracking of the coolant system’s expansion tank. As regards servicing, independents tend to stick to the earlier Phantoms so you’ll almost certainly be staying within the regular R-R dealer network.

CHASSIS

The new Phantom came in short (ha!) or EW long wheelbase formats. There was no monocoque. Instead it had a spaceframe that was scalable for use in future Rolls-Royce models. In a time of increased platform sharing this was a powerful statement of intent. R-R called it the Architecture of Luxury. One of its advantages was in drivetrain flexibility. Another was that it allowed Rolls-Royce to build incredibly expensive one-offs for its most loaded customers, many of whom had been asking for cars more tailored to them.

The VIII’s spaceframe assembly was lighter than the VII’s, which meant that more stuff could be put into the new car without adding to its overall weight. Importantly, it was 30 per cent stiffer than the old car, allowing the dynamics to be sharpened without compromising on refinement or, perhaps most important of all, ride comfort – which has been categorised as peerless by most objective observers. Softer-walled ‘Silent Seal’ tyres developed with Continental played a part in that, as did the double-volume air springs. With electronically decoupling anti-roll bars front and rear brilliantly managing lean and wallow you could still hustle the thing down a country lane (as long as the lane was wide enough, anyway) helped by the remarkably well-resolved steering and the excellent brake pedal feel.

A stereo camera embedded in the windscreen scanned the road ahead to proactively prepare the suspension for anything coming up, from a pothole to a possum, which when you think about it has to be better than a retrospective reaction to something you’ve just squished. With a nod and a wink to the early days of motoring, when the legal maximum was 4mph and a bloke with a moustache and a stovepipe hat had to walk in front of you with a red flag, R-R called this the Flagbearer system. Working with anti-roll bars and four-wheel steering, the chassis succeeded in blending a ‘Magic Carpet Ride’ with a level of agility belying the size of the car.

There have been examples of power steering fluid leakage on earlier Phantoms. Air suspension is always likely to leak at some point in its life, no matter who makes it.

BODYWORK

This is not a small car. Although the VIII’s body was slightly shorter than the VII’s (by 8cm), it was still the world’s longest production car at 5.76 metres, or 5.98 metres for the EW model. From a practical point of view, R-R couldn’t make it any longer than that because in China, the company’s second biggest market, you need a bus licence to drive anything longer than 6 metres. A new precision body joining process gave the new Phantom that ‘hewn from solid’ look that every car manufacturer lusts after. 44,000 paint colours were on offer, or you could show them your own colour and they’d mix that up for you. Paint was £7,000 for a single colour or £24,000 for two-tone.

Insulation accounted for 130kg of the VIII’s weight. Swathes of foam and felt plus 6mm thick double-layer glass, double-skin alloy in the floors and bulkhead and foam filling in those softwall tyres gave R-R the chance to claim the title of ‘most silent car in the world’. That claim was legitimised by early road and vibration tests which produced sound levels so low the acoustic test engineer thought the measuring instruments had been wrongly calibrated. Other engineers were worried that it might be too quiet, unnervingly so, the monastic silence no longer being interrupted by the ticking clock traditionally hailed as the noisiest thing in a Rolls-Royce. It was possible to spec an analogue clock in the dash, but it would be a silent electric item rather than a clattery old mechanical one.

The doors didn’t simply shut in a Phantom VIII. On touching the door handle they ‘whispered closed, enveloping occupants in The Embrace’. Not quite the same as getting into a Trabant or an old Landie, then. For the full luxury effect, R-R envisaged ‘an assistant or valet stepping forward to lightly touch the sensor’ once you were safely ensconced inside. Anybody here living in this world? If so, welcome, you have our respect and seething hatred.

The new and slightly higher Pantheon grille, so called to reflect its inspiration by the Roman temple of the same name, was raked back and faired into the bodywork for the first time in Phantom history, the result visually harking back in the view of some to the James Young-era Silver Cloud. The hand-polished stainless steel used for that was also used for much of the other brightwork including the door handles, which were deliberately substantial in an era of disappearing (and sometimes malfunctioning) ones. The trim strips running from the leading edge of the front windows to the C-pillars were the largest pieces of stainless steel to appear on any production car. The Spirit of Ecstasy radiator mascot could be lowered away to save it from thieves.

INTERIOR

Again, the Phantom didn’t have anything as common as a cabin. It had a ‘Suite’. Everything you touched, or that touched you, was fabulous. The leather was sourced from Bavarian bulls, the carpet wool from English lambs, and the 17 types of wood on offer came from Africa, Asia, America and Europe. Even the plastics were several cuts above the best you might find elsewhere.

The seats front and rear were deliriously comfortable. You could choose a two- or three-seat configuration in the back. The two-seater gave you the option of having a champagne cooler between the seats. The Phantom VIII featured Rolls’s biggest starlight headliner ever. You could have the LEDs twinkling in the correct pattern for your preferred section of the universe, with occasional shooting stars, or you could have them concentrated for reading. It took two men up to thirteen hours to fit all the LEDs, partially explaining the £10,000 option cost.

R-R reckoned that the Phantom’s head-up display was the highest resolution HUD in the auto industry. The enormous Gallery dashboard allowed owners to install their own choice of artwork or personal design behind the glass. One owner had a gold-plated 3D relief map of their DNA put on there.

Naturally you had every driver and passenger convenience known to man in a Phantom including alertness assistant, a four-camera network for 360-degree panoramic and helicopter views, night vision, active cruise, collision, pedestrian, cross-traffic, lane departure and lane change warnings, and laser headlights that could throw a beam more than 600 metres up the road.

The BMW iDrive 8.5 infotainment system was clear and easy to use. When the car was turned off the screen swivelled away out of sight and you could fold the control knob into the central cubby. The boot was massive at 550 litres, bigger than anything remotely comparable from Audi, BMW or Mercedes, and the opening was similarly huge for the convenience of your assistant or valet.

Every Phantom came with huge rear vanity mirrors and electrically operated picnic tables on the backs of the front seats that looked more than capable of outlasting the most hyperactive child. Chuck another £8k into the pot and R-R would turn the back of the car into a Rear Theatre with screens that would not only play videos but also put up the satnav screen which you could reset from your back pew.

The rear-hinged back doors opened up to a 90-degree angle with the body, making entry and exit easy, but you probably wouldn’t want to do that in the Aldi car park if your assistant or valet had parked between two other cars and then run off to the toilet. All four doors could be closed from the inside by a button press. It was a single press to get in from outside, or a continuous one if you were inside trying to get out, thus (maybe) cleverly getting around the potential Aldi problem of smashing the door against some commoner’s heap.

All the vehicle graphics on the various knobs and screens were of an actual Phantom rather than some random identikit car. The lowest setting on the HVAC fan knob wasn’t marked ‘Low’. It was marked ‘Soft’. Nice. You’ll want to check that the beautifully made full-size umbrella is still in residence in the rear door as they have been known to disappear.

PH VERDICT

‘The pinnacle of automotive opulence… a masterpiece of quiet power, crafted not just to be driven but to be revered.’ Rolls-Royce’s PR output could sometimes seem a little over the top but, apart from the reverence, such florid language is perfectly justified in the case of the Phantom VIII. Draw up a list of desirable limousine attributes and a Maybach will compete on some level in many categories, but at the end of the day it’s still only a modified S Class rather than a wonderfully purpose-built, not to say coachbuilt, means of transporting your loved ones to lovely places.

Owning cars like this will be an alien proposition to many PHers, because in the vast majority of cases most of the dynamic driving excellence is going to be enjoyed by someone who neither owns it or will be paying the bills for it, i.e. the employee in the front seat. The compensation for the owner, and it’s a mighty one, is a back seat experience like no other. If you are one of the tiny number of owner-drivers with a family you won’t find anything to match its collective pleasure/feel-good score, if there is such a thing. But you will have to get over the nagging feeling as you get out from behind the wheel that onlookers will think you’re the chauffeur.

The great thing about shopping for a used Phantom VIII is that the inherent quality and the condition in which they’ll have been kept means that the cheapest examples look just as stunning as the dearest ones. Put a private plate on an early car and you’ll have a job distinguishing it from a privately registered 2025 car.

The most affordable VIII in PH’s Classifieds at the time of writing in August 2025 was this 2018 car in Jubilee Silver/Iguazu Blue with 29,000 miles. On the Wikipedia page for the Iguazu Falls bordering Argentina and Brazil you’ll see a pic of the water there, and it’s an exact match for the colour of this Rolls. Beautiful. The price of this car was set at £198,880, a small drop over the previous month from its starting price of £199,980. Doubtless you could chip quite a chunk more off if you could be bothered. The buyer is surely king in the used Phantom market. If you really feel the need to spend more cash, there are four more cars on PH for under £250k, and another four over that figure. The three dearest examples were all Series II cars: a ’24 with 1,600 miles at £378k,and two ‘25s with 2,300 and 500 miles at £390k and £420k respectively.

See every Phantom for sale