A Rolls-Royce Phantom super luxury car, seen in the Lido area in Beijing in 2016. The giant Roller was painted in black with a dark silver grille, a red-orange stripe on the side, and a totally red leather interior.
Note the Element Fresh restaurant in the background. They had a small restaurant chain, hugely popular in the mid- and late 2000’s, with ‘healthy’ sandwiches and such more nonsense. They filed for bankruptcy in late 2021. Too bad for the owners but I won’t miss them for a minute. Gimme pizza!
Time for a bit of complicated license plate science. In the 1980’s private car ownership was still very new in China. The first series of privately owned cars got blue 京A license plates. In those days the plate stayed with the car. So if you sold your 京A car to someone else, he would get the plate as well. The only exception to that rule was when a vehicle was crashed or scrapped. In those cases, the owner of the crashed/scrapped vehicle could buy a new car using the same license plate.
In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, when China became richer and car ownership became more common, the early 京A license plates became greatly desired, because it showed that the owner was ‘ rich’ very early, as he could afford a car. So rich folks bought many of the original 京A cars, scrapped them, and put the license plate on an other, usually way more expensive, car. This is a typical example, a Rolls-Royce Phantom with 京A·65856.
Today, this way of getting a cool old plate is no longer possible. Since 2015 or so, depending a bit on district, Beijing has introduced a new license plate system where the plate stays with the owner and not with the car. This system was introduced to reduce the number of cars on the road. So when you sell your car to somebody else, you still keep the license plate, which you will need if you want to buy a new car.
There is no way, anymore, to transfer license plates from one person to another. The only loophole is wen you start a company, company buys cars, you sell the company, etc. Folks without a plate Beijing actually do this, buying companies just so they get a license.
The only other way to get a license plate for a new car is via the infamous lottery system, where people may have to wait many years before they get a plate.
A Rolls-Royce can park where no others can.
Back now, finally, to the car: the 2016 Rolls-Royce Phantom was powered by a 6.7 liter V12 engine with an output of 460 hp and 720 Nm. The motor was mated to an 8-speed automatic sending horses to the rear wheels. I always considered it a rather impressive and even a beautiful car, but just a bit too… big. Price in 2016 started at 6.88 million yuan. Worth it? For the tech and quality for sure, and in China you’ll always have a parking place!