A giant Soar Automobile Rolls-Royce Phantom ‘wedding car, Spotted in China in the great city of Shanghai by Reader Matthijs van L., thank you for the pictures! This is the long-wheelbase version (SWB here), painted in virgin white with a loud and shiny grille, Rolls-Rolls stickers on the front doors, and wheels completely covered by soul-mirroring chrome.

The vehicle is ‘inspired’ by the 1961 Rolls-Royce Phantom. It is based on a Great Wall SUV platform and powered by a China-made Mitsubishi 2.4 four-cylinder petrol with 135hp and 200nm. She is a huge white whale: 6900/1920/1750, wheelbase is 4800 and weight is 2090kg. Shanghai is a good place for spotting Soar, earlier on we saw a golden LWB.

Soar Automobile was/is a company from the great city of Qingdao in Shandong Province, specialized in making ambulances and other special vehicles, including these Phantom wedding cars. The company also owned the famous Jinma brand, which manufactured even weirder classic-looking cars.

Sadly, the company doesn’t make Rollers any more and the old website is gone. It is now trading under the Jory name, making boring police cars and ambulances and such so. The Chinese name however is still the same (索尔, Suo’er).  Too bad because these big machines represented a unique aspect of Chinese car culture. The demise of the Soar Rolls-Royce is indeed, the end of an era.