Auto Trader

A friend and I were having a chat about the virtues of the Rolls Royce Phantom over a couple of pints.

It's an anachronism, an overblown waste of time and an ugly piece of nostalgia, said my beer-addled friend.

I was equally tactful when I told him he was wrong, says Stuart Milne.

The Phantom is a stupendous piece of engineering, as beautiful as anything from the exotic styling houses of Italy, and as British as spotted dick and custard.

OK, maybe not entirely British, since the company was taken over by BMW in 2003, but it's assembled in a stunning new factory at Goodwood by a team of skilled British workers.

It also wears the most British of badges.

I was lucky enough to be chauffeured around a private test track in a Phantom and I can report that, even at 120mph, it was as silent as the British Library at midnight. A Ferrari 575 screamed past us a few feet away. You could hear a pin drop.

Unlike the Maybach - which is like the Rolls' chavvier mate - the Phantom's interior is an exercise in restraint. It just isn't cricket to scatter the beautiful, French-polished dash with uncouth plastic switches, knobs and dials. Most of the auxiliary controls are hidden from view.

You don't even have a rev counter. You get a dial telling you how much grunt you've got in reserve. How British is that?

Riding in the back is sheer opulence. And let's face it, if you can fork out £254,000 for a car, you've probably got a driver already. The carpet has a thicker shagpile than your living room, while it's the little touches that set it apart. Art deco-style lights in the rear pillars and chrome handled umbrellas in the doors are just two of the highlights.

It has the best stereo ever fitted to a car, providing 420 watts of aural pleasure. It even has a 16-litre resonance chamber under the seats to act live a huge speaker cabinet.

From the outside, it has presence like no other. It's longer than a Range Rover and looks like it could withstand a nuclear assault.

Rolls' attention to detail is second to none. The 'RR' badges in the middle of the wheels are weighted, so they always remain upright, while The Spirit of Ecstasy statuette retracts into the grille to avoid being pinched by the peasantry.

 Tipping the scales at more than three tonnes, it needs some muscle to catapult it to 60mph in 5.7 seconds and on to a continent crushing 149mph. Luckily, it has a silky smooth 6.75-litre leviathan to smash its way there.

The Phantom screams to the world 'I've made it'; and that's why it is the best luxury car in the world.

If you fancy driving the wheeled equivalent of Buckingham Palace, you'll need to shell out upwards of £145,000; but that's a snip considering the original list price of £254,000. Auto Trader has six Phantoms for sale, including an ultra-rare example from 1926.