Today’s Rolls Royce is one ghost story that shouldn’t prove too scary. Its price on the other hand, might be another story.

Something that I had wanted to mention in my review of the we looked at last Friday was its tachometer. What I noticed was that while the Corvette’s rev counter went up to a heady nine thousand RPMs, its redline lived in the more modest fifty-three hundred to fifty-five hundred neighborhood. The reason the tach designed in this odd fashion was seemingly to provide a visual alignment with the number spacing on the 160 mile per hour speedometer living next door.

That tach apparently wasn’t the only thing odd about that classic Sting Ray—it seems its $49,000 asking price was a bit off-putting too. That resulted in a 56 percent Crack Pipe defeat for the Hawaii-located ‘Vette.

Do you believe in ghosts? Spectral phantoms have long been prime horror movie fodder. Surprisingly, they’ve also provided a naming convention for the British automaker Rolls Royce for more than a century.

Rolls Royce is an interesting company. It’s one of the oldest car builders on the planet, harkening back to the first partnership between Charles Rolls and Henry Royce in 1904. Today the company is owned outright by BMW. In between they built a reputation for crafting, in the company’s own words, “the best cars in the world,” as well as some of the finest piston and jet airplane engines on that very same planet.

It’s safe to say that the company did their part in defending the skies over Great Britain during WWII. Their Merlin V12 engine found its way under the cowls of most of Britain’s fighter planes and were decisive components in the Battle of Britain. Today Rolls Royce is owned by those same former foes.

In fact, this has a lot of German engineering under its “veddy British” body. Named in honor of the Silver Ghost introduced in 1906, the current Ghost made its debut more than a century later at the 2009 Shanghai Auto Show. It was intended as a more mass market model to be slotted in under the behemoth Phantom, but remains an impressively substantial saloon nonetheless. Consider these specs: 129.7-inch wheelbase, 562 horsepower 6.5-litre twin-turbo V12, 5,490 pound kerb weight, suicide rear doors. That’s a lot of car.

It is those suicide rear doors that are probably the Ghost’s most notable feature. The format is shared with the Phantom and money grab Cullinan and harkens back to the classic luxury cars of the past.

This 2011 Ghost is dealer offered and is advocated in its ad as being “very nice and well maintained.” You might think that a car described as “the best in the world” might not need accession, but this Ghost has had a number of options piled onto its basic best-ness. Those include a panoramic moon roof, rear theatre system, chromed 20-inch alloys with self-leveling logos, and a satin silver bonnet center.

Other additions include an extended leather package, heads-up 7up display, and seashell leather with navy blue stitching. There’s a ton more here, all noted with their original costs. I think my favorite is the “Chromed Visible Exhausts” which apparently would set you back $3,200 when new.

This all rides on a platform derived from that of the F01 7-series. It uses BMW’s iDrive system with the knob and buttons between the seats. Neophytes and the great unwashed may confuse that with the gear selector as these days many cars are using a similar console-mounted knob for that function.

On the Rolls, you get the party started with a column mounted lever. Again, that might be somewhat confusing to the inexperienced as there are fully four levers sprouting from the column’s sides like some sort of prickly pear cactus. Other controls seem less arcane in their function and everything in here looks like it’s out of my price range. The car carries at least one of its cool door-snooded umbrellas, as well as a modest 58,820 miles on the digital odometer.

The bodywork doesn’t appear to show even those miles. The Metropolitan Blue paint holds an appreciable bit of its original luster, and is offset nicely by the the old school silver bonnet. The tires carry a decent bit of tread too, but we don’t get to see any date stamps so we can’t tell their age. According to the seller, the car comes with 28 service records and a CarFax that’s unblemished. The title is said to be free and clear.

You’ve probably never even considered owning a modern Rolls Royce Ghost. Despite its position in the marque’s lineup as a lower echelon model it’s still a freaking expensive ride to buy new and maintain. As proof, the ad claims this one originally went for over $300K back in 2011. It’s now a far more reasonable $89,975, and yes I did giggle a bit when writing “far more reasonable $89,975.”

That’s still a far cry from three-hundred grand and considering the specs and history of this Ghost, it’s potentially not a bad deal. That, of course, is what we’re here to determine.

What’s your take on this lower-end Roller and that $89,975 price? Does that seem like a deal to crawl into the almostultimate lap of luxury? Or, for that much does this Rolls not stand a Ghost of a chance?

You decide!

Los Angeles, CA , or go if the ad disappears.

H/T to RevUnlimiter for the hookup!

Help me out with NPOCP. Hit me up at and send me a fixed-price tip. Remember to include your Kinja handle.