Rolls Royce Ghost Stirs Shopping Frenzy

Although it is yet to be released, the long-awaited Rolls Royce Ghost is already attracting the interest of many people around the world, with the British manufacturer claiming that around 1,500 persons have already expressed their interest in the future model. Thanks to these early figures, Rolls Royce hopes to double the company's annual sales in 2009, despite the difficult economic environment we're currently living in.

Rolls Royce CEO Tom Purves told the Reuters Global Luxury Summit in London that the future Ghost is drawing an impressive interest nowadays, with around 1,500 people likely to proceed with an acquisition.

"Over 10,000 people have expressed some sort of interest, but at least 15 percent have expressed a genuine desire to own the vehicle," he was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Rolls Royce Ghost will be officially shown to the world at the upcoming Frankfurt Auto Show in September and is expected to boost the company's sales straight from the first months of availability. To give you an idea, Rolls delivered a total of 1,200 Phantom units last month, which represents a new sales record for the BMW-owned brand.

"We are trading reasonably well, just not on the scale of last year," Purves added. "We expect to continue to make a profitable contribution. We are bumping along the bottom ... I do not see things getting any worse."

Rolls Royce earlier this year decided to hire some 150 new workers for the production of the Ghost model which will be manufactured at the Goodwood factory in Sussex, UK. Although this is only pure speculation, it is believed that the upcoming Rolls model will be priced at around 170,000 pounds.