Rolls-Royce Phantom

Some journeys are wrong for this car, and we will tell you which ones. Take a weekday airport transfer for two people with suitcases: that is an expensive way of moving luggage, and a flagship saloon handles it better in traffic anyway. What justifies the Phantom is a day with photographs in it, or an arrival with an audience watching. Where a schedule is purely functional we point you at another vehicle, even though doing so hands us the smaller booking.

Given the exterior dimensions, two large cases and two cabin bags catches people out, and the reason is plain enough: the rear compartment came before the boot, precisely as it should have done. A wedding day it handles comfortably. Anything resembling a holiday departure calls for a second vehicle to take the luggage, leaving this one to carry only the people who matter to the photograph.

Planning turns on length and width. Narrow lanes with passing places, village churches with tight lych-gates, multi-storey car parks carrying height and turning limits, hotel courtyards laid out in the eighteenth century: all of it wants checking rather than assuming. Extended-wheelbase examples stretch further again. In its favour, the sill sits low and the coach doors open to an unusually generous aperture, so no passenger has ever had to climb out of one awkwardly.