Driving a Rolls-Royce Phantom is one of the most challenging parts of being an automotive journalist. Hey wait, come on. Don’t slam your computer shut and walk away just yet. We aren’t saying it isn’t a very special experience, but imagine sitting there behind the wheel, a company spokesman rambling away in the passenger seat about rivets and high-altitude free range cattle, and all you can think is “Man, that back seat is where I need to be.” When we send a whole crew of us to test one, fights ensue about who has to drive, and pictures like the fourth one down on our staff page happen. Long story short, the Phantom may be the most aristocratic car on the planet, but the fact is, most kings don’t drive themselves.

Meet the Ghost, the cure to that ailment, and please don’t call it the “cheap” Rolls-Royce. The Ghost sacrifices nothing in terms of Phantom-like build quality perfection, and with a base price of $245,000 that’ll quickly climb once the build sheet comes out, it isn’t that much less expensive.

People have also been calling the Ghost a fancier BMW 7-series, but they’re only 20 percent right. That’s the amount of shared components between the Ghost and the 760Li, and these cost-saving collaborations are all completely transparent. The two share an engine block, but the Roller’s displacement is bumped up from 6.0 liters to 6.6, and most of the internals have been swapped as a result of the different geometry and the extra power — 563 hp and 575 lb-ft of torque. Other shared bits include electrical and climate control parts, along with a limited amount of the floorpan. The 760Li uses rear air suspension; the Ghost rides on air at all four corners. To be sure, at no point in our drive did we feel like we were driving a gussied-up Bimmer.

Despite the promise that the Ghost is a Rolls-Royce for drivers, old habits die hard and our time in the car starts in the rear seat. We hit the C-pillar-mounted button to automatically close the rear-hinged door and look around to find a familiar setting, with only the lower roofline feeling more constrictive than the Phantom. Only the freakiest nature's freaks could complain about legroom.

Whereas the Phantom’s rear cabin is an old world lounge awash in Art Deco design cues, the Ghost’s is a modern mobile office interpretation of the same overall aesthetic. Video screens are nicely integrated in the front seatbacks and warm-feeling wood tables swing up from under them. A cool attention to detail, each table has a chrome extender bar that slides out to properly support a laptop. On various sides of a fold-down rear armrest live an iDrive dial and controls for each rear seat — they bend, flex, and slide around in more ways than most front seats. They’re even both heated and ventilated. All that is missing from this near-perfect space is a refrigerator, which we were happy to hear is at least an option.

The cabin is a soothing, silent place, but we wouldn’t call it intimate, a trait that better describes competing Bentleys. Keep in mind that sizing is all relative, and something smaller than the Phantom can still be larger than your average moving van. Indeed, the Ghost is almost eighteen feet long and weights about 5500 pounds. Sitting in back, there’s a good deal of landscape in view within the panorama of the double-paned windows. After twenty minutes of taking it all in the soft rolling of the seat massager has us blissfully dozing off, when the vault door opens up, the sun cuts in, and we’re told it is our turn to drive.

Unlike past Rollers, the Ghost forgoes a prominent security gate of a grille for something that looks more like the inlet of jet engine that’s been squared off and dressed with vertical chrome bars. The twin-turbo V12 behind those bars cranks with the softness of a turbine, and I drop the ZF-sourced eight-speed into drive to turn the Ghost out of our hotel in downtown Philadelphia to point it toward those famous museum stairs from Rocky. To paraphrase Mick, this car launches like it eats lightning and craps thunder.

It isn’t just how unbelievable this huge car’s acceleration is (Rolls-Royce claims 4.8 seconds to 60 mph) but how silently it happens. We press down the right pedal, the rear of the car bites down on the asphalt, and while the car’s “power reserve” gauge dips to single digit percentages, not much else happens before the speedometer’s thin black needle is making a blur across its frosted white backdrop. What noise does pass through the firewall makes a distinct Rolls-Royce rumble, sounding nothing like the BMW with which it shares a block.

Making a car fast doesn’t make it a driver’s car and really, the Phantom as well is quite the chubby sprinter. So after a few moments of diving in and out of the addictive throttle, we turn our focus to the car’s other qualities. Unlike its big brother, the Ghost isn’t a hovercraft. It doesn’t sail along above traffic and above road imperfections, but bores through it. Off-camber turns don’t upset the Ghost, which uses the active anti-roll bars first introduced on the last-generation 7-series. The idea is that in normal driving the bars are decoupled, providing a smooth ride on straight roads. In corners, the bars get active and computers within the suspension calculate load every 2.5 milliseconds to properly counter body roll. In short, the Ghost does a pretty good job editing the book of automotive physics. We come off a sweeping on-ramp along the Schuykill River and the Ghost keeps on sticking as we venture deeper into the meat of the power curve.

If there is one way in which BMW’s influence shows through (other than the navigation screen, which is straight out of the 7-series) it is in the way all of the car’s systems — brakes, steering, suspension, and power delivery — all have one singular personality. The power comes on in a sweeping, effortless manner, so the brakes are slightly overboosted but powerful; the steering is light but responsive. And as the engine produces more serious speed, the steering progressively tightens up and the suspension starts pushing back at the car, all of the controls working predictably and in harmony. That balance of componentry is what makes a BMW such a fine driver’s car, and Rolls-Royce engineers have successfully translated that ideal with the Ghost. German precision and English craftsmanship seem more intertwined here than ever before.

The Ghost eases all of our concerns that a smaller Rolls-Royce might dilute the brand, that draw some questions about why it commands such a high premium over a 760Li. But as we all know well, the world has changed since the Phantom first debuted, and something so massive and overtly excessive can’t singlehandedly carry a brand any longer, even a brand with a winged lady out on the hood. The Ghost was a necessary vehicle for Rolls-Royce, and for something so essential, the team behind it truly made it seem unforced, a natural next step for the brand that no one who drives one will question.

Still, to say the Ghost blends in with the world is again something that’s only true relative to the Phantom. It sneaks by the public like an elephant wearing camouflage pants. But it isn’t that the Ghost gets fewer looks than a Phantom, it’s the looks it gets. It isn’t an intimidating, loathe-inducing vehicle. A Phantom draws a mixed bag of excited looks and disgusted ones, but our first experience in the Ghost brought only smiles and upturned thumbs. No, it isn’t a Rolls-Royce for the rest of us, but it is one that doesn’t look down on the world.

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