It isn't really hard to spot the Rolls Royce Ghost one moment and then completely lose sight of it, after all, this is the Rolls you drive fast in!

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When luxury meets performance, strange things happen. The skies darken out, thunder roars and a beautifully crafted timeless piece of metal, leather and pure horsepower come together as one to create some of the most evocative vehicles known to mankind. A certain spirit takes over and when things get slightly downsized, you get the Ghost with the 'Spirit of Ecstasy' proudly mounted on the hood. Rolled out in proper RR fashion, it is a striking machine - replete with everything that makes a Rolls Royce a Rolls Royce. But the Ghost isn't about the way it looks - it's all about the way it drives.

Armed with 6.6 litres of pistons, valves and gears that work in perfect unison to splurge out 560 PS of power, the Ghost is fast all the way from when you set eyes on the brochure. It's got the kind of specs that will make you want to pop open the hood and see for yourself if all that is real - and then it throws the massive V12 badge right in your face. But displacement alone isn't the secret of the Ghost's supernatural-for-it's-size performance. Feeding that heavenly 12 cylinder configuration is a pair of turbochargers that act like steroids to the muscle. Power is but one aspect of the equation though - it's the torque that will really blow your mind and there are loads and loads of it!

The humble piece of paper in the brochure says it's just over 700 Nm but when you're strapped in the driver's seat and you floor the throttle it seems like an enormous amount more! It's a surreal experience that - get in, belt up, foot on brake, parking brake disengaged, tiny gear lever on steering stalk pulled to D, brakes off and throttle floored. All's good till yet, but then you get pinned to the back of your seat, your brain goes knocking on the back of your skull and the engine screams in delight as you hurtle forward to achieving 100km/h in 4.7 seconds.

Then the engine quiets up and settles into a whisper but you notice that you're still accelerating hard. Lest you think that way, that isn't a flaw - you see, the Rolls Royce types are all about luxury and silence is a good measure of it, which is why the Ghost has been deliberately engineered to be silent. After all, if you wanted noise you'd get a cramped Lamborghini or maybe a spacious BMW 7-Series. But that isn't just the same as getting an RR Ghost now, is it? Or is it?

Over the years platform sharing has become common practice and with Rolls Royce now owned by BMW it is but natural to suspect that the smallest Royce shares its platform with the biggest Bavarian – the 7-Series. But while many people may misunderstand and say that the Ghost is just an expensively clothed 7 with a legendary symbol on its forehead, it isn’t. The Ghost gets the full Rolls Royce treatment and if your automotive history is sound, you’d know what that means.