First of all, let’s get this straight: the photos on our pages are not Photoshop tricks or AI fantasies. That really is a Rolls-Royce Phantom floating inside the Tinside Lido in Plymouth, the famed Art Deco pool perched on the edge of the English Channel. The spectacle marked a dazzling centerpiece of the 100 Years of Phantom celebration — a car in a pool, a century in the making.
Why a pool? To understand, you need to look at Rolls-Royce’s long and playful connection with the world of popular music.
Long before John Lennon, Elvis Presley, and Pharrell Williams wrote themselves into Phantom’s story, artists such as Duke Ellington, Fred Astaire, Count Basie, Ravi Shankar, Edith Piaf, and Sam Cooke all arrived in Rolls-Royce — recognizing the Phantom as the ultimate emblem of artistry and achievement.
“From the Golden Age of Hollywood to the rise of hip-hop, over the last 100 years, music artists have used Phantom to project their identity and challenge convention. Their motor cars often became icons in their own right, with a lasting place in the history of modern music. This enduring connection reminds us that Rolls-Royce and the extraordinary people who are part of the marque’s story are united by one ambition: to make their presence felt.”
And what a soundtrack Phantom has carried. Elvis bought his Phantom V in 1963. John Lennon had his painted in psychedelic yellow. Liberace famously covered his 1961 Phantom V in glittering mirrored tiles — a rolling disco ball later immortalized in Behind the Candelabra. Sir Elton John had both a Phantom V and VI, while modern icons like Snoop Dogg brought the tradition into hip-hop.
And then there’s the infamous legend: Keith Moon allegedly drove his Rolls-Royce into the swimming pool of a Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan. Whether fact or fable, the myth only deepens Phantom’s mischievous connection to music, spectacle, and excess.
So here we are, 100 years later, with a Rolls-Royce Phantom serenely floating in a seaside pool. A scene so improbable, so fantastical, and yet so perfectly Phantom.
See the proof below!
