1999 Rolls Royce Silver Seraph Base Sedan 4-door 5.4l No Reserve Luxury on 2040-cars

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Rolls-Royce posts 25% jump in sales thanks to Cullinan demand

Luxury carmaker Rolls-Royce said on Tuesday it recorded a 25% jump in sales in 2019, underpinned by solid demand for its first-ever SUV, Cullinan, just a year after the launch. The 116-year-old British company said it sold a record 5,152 cars in 2019, compared with 4,107 units in the prior year. "Worldwide demand last year for our Cullinan SUV has driven this success and is expected to stabilize in 2020," Chief Executive Officer Torsten Mueller-Oetvoes said in a statement. The Cullinan was unveiled in 2018. The BMW-owned brand's strong numbers serve as a breather at a time when the global automobile industry is still grappling with various challenges amid a broader economic slowdown that dented sales of many automakers. North America continued to be the biggest contributor with about a third of Rolls-Royce's total sales, followed by China and Europe. Related Video:

Rolls-Royce Spectre EV spied up close in best spy shots yet

Rolls-Royce promised it would be developing the Spectre electric car “in plain sight,” and hereÂ’s some decent proof of that in spy shot form. Outside of the initial teaser photos released by Rolls-Royce earlier this year, we havenÂ’t seen any other details of the electric Rolls. ThatÂ’s changed today, as one of our spy shooters captured a test Spectre both on the pavement and on a flatbed.  The most intriguing angle of view is directly from the front. We can just make out that this Rolls appears to be wearing a version of the upcoming stacked headlight look previously spied on soon-to-come BMW models like the next-gen 7 Series and refreshed X7. The close-up view also provides a look at the traditional Rolls-Royce grille and the lower front bumper design. Perhaps Rolls will sort out a more elegant solution by production time, but the sensor module in the center of the lower front bumper is a bit of an eyesore.  Heading to the rear, we see some taillights lit up, but itÂ’s difficult to make out what they might look like in final production form. These could simply be test lights and not represent what the actual production lights look like, too. As for the rest of the rear, the lower bumper is quite the piece. It juts out way beyond the bodywork and in no way looks like the finished product. One of the last intriguing items of note is the angle of the rear tire when the driver has the steering wheel at full lock. ItÂ’s not an extreme angle of rear-wheel steer, but the rear wheel does appear to be turned in the opposite direction as the fronts. This car being a coupe, itÂ’s reasonable that it wouldnÂ’t need a massive amount of rear-wheel steering to be agile in a city, but itÂ’s still a Rolls-Royce, so coupe or not, itÂ’s massive. Beyond those specific details, we can simply enjoy seeing the upcoming EV in clearer, closer photos than ever before. Rolls-Royce says the production car is coming in 2023, so we suspect there will be many more spy shots and small details released between now and then. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

The hottest modern sports cars rendered as rally racers

The modern-day World Rally Championship a monumental amount of fun to watch – I should know, as I recently was lucky enough to head to the UK to watch WRC Wales Rally GB – but even the most monstrous of the current WRC cars are based on fairly pedestrian European hatchbacks. Back in the heyday of rally, the Group B era in the 1980s, much hotter cars were the basis of even more incredible competition machines, for the most part. Take the exotic Ford RS200, or the Lancia Delta S4 with its twin-charged engine. And the hatchback-based Group B cars were bonkers, too. So what would some of our favorite modern cars look like if Group B had never ended? A British site named CarWow hired an artist to reimagine everything from the Rolls-Royce Wraith to the Porsche 911 as a retro-inspired rally car, and they were kind enough to let us share the results in the gallery above. The gallery features an Alfa Romeo Giulia in Martini livery, an Audi TT in classic Ur-Quattro colors, a Fiat 500 Abarth sporting massive flares and a hood blister full of auxiliary lights, a new Ford Mustang in RS200 livery, a Lancia Delta in Alitalia colors, a Porsche 911 in Rothmans livery, a Renault-Alpine in classic blue, a Rolls-Royce Wraith tribute to the Jules cologne Corniche Coupe, and a relatively modern-looking VW Touran. So far, the favorite around the office is the incredible Mercedes-Benz S-Class that is an homage to the wonderful 300 SEL 6.8 AMG "Red Pig" that essentially put AMG on the map. Check out the gallery above and see which one you like the best. Related Video: