Rolls Royce is expanding its line up for Ghost model, a car costing $245,000 and above. It intends to come out with less expensive model that will also be sold in India, China and Middle East. Currently Rolls Royce rights are held by BMW, and the erstwhile RR Ghost model utilizes BMW 7 series platform. The company had sold all 60 RR Ghost in less than two weeks.
The Ghost is Rolls-Royce's second product line after the stately Phantom, which starts at $380,000. Even with its cheaper price tag, the smaller model, which is 17.7 feet long, will boost operating profit, said Rolls-Royce Chief Executive Officer Torsten Mueller-Oetvoes. "Rolls-Royce has always been a really super-premium brand, and BMW has kept them at the top of the market," said Jonathan Poskitt, an analyst at JD Power & Associates. "The rich are still rich, and that end of the market is driven in some sense by what models are available."
But Rolls-Royce will remain an exclusive, niche manufacturer. "We will definitely not end off in the tens of thousands of units," Mueller-Oetvoes said to Bloomberg. "That's not the right strategy for us. Rolls-Royce always needs to stay very exclusive. We only build a car when there is a customer behind it."
