{"id":4923,"date":"2021-01-10T00:49:29","date_gmt":"2021-01-10T00:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/?p=4923"},"modified":"2021-01-10T18:44:41","modified_gmt":"2021-01-10T18:44:41","slug":"badge-engineering-at-its-finest-rolls-royce-phantom-spotted-in-manhattan-with-gm-hybrid-emblems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/?p=4923","title":{"rendered":"Badge-engineering at its finest? Rolls-Royce Phantom spotted in Manhattan with GM hybrid emblems"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there is any car that seems to be well suited to either hybridization<\/a> or outright electrification, the Rolls-Royce Phantom<\/a> would seem to be logical candidate. Many of them are used transporting the wealthy around the world's great cities like Paris, London<\/a> and Manhattan in trips that are not necessarily that long. It's also not unheard for a manufacturer to provide vehicles to customers for field testing, just as BMW<\/a> is doing right now with the electric Mini E. However, aside from the highly publicized Mini E project, these sorts of initiatives are typically done on the down-low.<\/p>\n

So when we heard that someone had spotted an extended-wheelbase Phantom<\/a> prowling the streets of New York with an extra badge on each of its fenders<\/a>, we were naturally a bit suspect. The car that was photographed wears hybrid badges of the same type used on all of General Motors<\/a>' gas-electric vehicles. The driver claims that car was loaned<\/a> to a VIP client for evaluation by Rolls-Royce<\/a>. Remember, friends, that Rolls-Royce is owned by BMW \u2013 a company that has a partnership with GM<\/a>, Daimler and Chrysler<\/a> to develop a two-mode hybrid system. It is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that BMW might want to evaluate or even build a two-mode hybrid Phantom. However, it is almost inconceivable that any such vehicle would be clad in GM badges.<\/p>\n

Adding further cold water to this story is the report earlier this week that BMW and Daimler are looking at dissolving the two-mode partnership<\/a> and going in a different direction with their hybrid efforts. Our guess is that the owner of this particular Roller simply had a guilty environmental conscience (or a sense of humor) but couldn't bring himself to be seen in anything as pedestrian as a Toyota Prius<\/a>. We're still waiting for a comment from Rolls-Royce.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Rolls-Royce spokesman Wayne Kung confirmed our suspicions that this is not a Rolls prototype. The company does not currently have any prototypes running in the New York area.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

https:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2009\/07\/24\/badge-engineering-at-its-finest-rolls-royce-phantom-spotted-in\/<\/p>\n

2009-07-24T14:58:00+00:00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there is any car that seems to be well suited to either hybridization or outright electrification, the Rolls-Royce Phantom would seem to be logical candidate. Many of them are used transporting the wealthy around the world's great cities like\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autoblog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10488,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923\/revisions\/10488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}