When it launches very soon, the new Rolls-Royce Ghost will think for you. The company has announced its next-generation Ghost will feature all-wheel drive, which makes it only the second Rolls-Royce – after its big brother Cullinan – to feature a system that requires each wheel to do some hard work.

And, considering Rolls tells us its customers wanted this next Ghost to be “even more enjoyable to drive”, they will be worked fairly hard.

Alongside the AWD setup, the new Ghost will feature all-wheel steering too. The fancy new aluminium chassis used for that Cullinan and the amazing new Phantom will underpin Ghost Mk2, and Rolls tells us it’ll feature new suspension trickery.

The first of these is something called the ‘Planar’ system, which mounts an upper wishbone damper unit above the front suspension assembly for a more “stable” ride. The second is called ‘Flagbearer’, which reads the road ahead via cameras to prepare the suspension.

Finally, there’s satellite aided transmission, which – as we’ve seen elsewhere – uses GPS data to pre-select the best gear for each particular corner. Like we said, it’ll do the hard work and thinking for you, because luxury is not worrying about twiddling the damper controls when you or your chauffeur hit a nice bit of road.

Though, “it’s not trying to be a sportscar”, explains RR’s Ghost engineering lead Jonathan Sims, “it’s not trying to be a grand statement – it’s simply exceptional and exceptionally simple”.

As mentioned, we’ll see it very soon. Stay tuned…

STORY Vijay Pattni