Rolls Royce Ghost


Rolls-Royce says it has received around 1500 serious "expressions of interest" for its soon to be launched Ghost - a figure that would more than double the group's annual sales.

Chief executive Tom Purves told the Reuters Global Luxury Summit in London on Tuesday that the company, owned by BMW, would not unveil the new car until September but had generated "overwhelmingly positive" feedback after touring the world with a prototype.

"More than 10 000 people have expressed some sort of interest but at least 15 percent have expressed a genuine desire to own the vehicle."

The Ghost will be sold alongside the company's existing Phantom, of which Rolls sold a record 1200 in 2008.

"We're trading reasonably well, just not on the scale of 2008," Purves said, adding that the luxury end of the car industry was typically late to enter a recession and late coming out of one.

Purves also said Rolls-Royce was delivering a profit to its loss-making German parent.

"We expect to continue to make a (profitable) contribution," he said.

He believed the economy had bottomed out.

"We are bumping along the bottom... I don't see things getting any worse," he said. - Reuters