It’s a special day when a Rolls-Royce graces your driveway. A rolling tribute to the spoils of wealth, the 2021 Rolls-Royce Ghost manages to be stately and classy, but not crass or ostentatious. It’s resolutely committed to quality, so much so that you want to up your game as a driver. You want to dress better, act more civilized, show it to your friends and family, and attempt to live a more sophisticated life. That’s what I did in my three short days with a 2021 Ghost, the smaller of Rolls’ two ultra-luxury sedans. I gave friends a high-end experience they wouldn’t normally have and took my family out to a fancy socially distanced dinner. Along the way, I learned some of the ways the auto industry’s benchmark for luxury hits and misses.

The Ghost comes up with new ways to pamper passengers. The so-called “interior suite” has the requisite features you can get in most luxury cars: heated and cooled seats, multiple power-seat adjustments, seat massagers front and rear, and four-zone automatic climate control. Then there are the features that you don’t expect: doors that open and close automatically at the push of a button or pull of a handle, rear infotainment controls, heated armrests, rear seat tables, plush lamb’s wool carpeting, and umbrellas in the doors.

The Ghost is full of details that surprise and delight. The Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament rises and retracts when the car is turned on and off. The Starlight Headliner has thousands of pinhole lights to approximate the night sky and it even simulates shooting stars. The passenger side of the dash has 850 stars of its own lit by 152 LEDs, and yet they’re not visible during the day. More than the party tricks, the Ghost is built to an exacting standard. The metal controls are cold to the touch and move with weighty precision. The leather is buttery smooth, and all the tolerances are tight. Even the sound is a purposeful whisper that isn’t as disorienting as complete quiet. The floors and cowl are double skinned to sandwich sound deadener, the tires have sound deadener of their own, the seat frames are damped to match the interior frequency, and ports were added under the parcel shelf to equalize highway thrum with the interior frequency as well. This all creates a serene environment for driver and passengers alike and makes the Ghost perhaps the most comfortable road trip car on the market.

It’s just as much of a pleasure to drive the Ghost as it is to be driven in it. Yes, it still drives like a land yacht, but a smaller more controllable land yacht than the last generation. A lot of suspension technology and an exclusive Rolls-Royce aluminum spaceframe architecture that also underpins the flagship Phantom sedan and Cullinan SUV create a controlled ride that we’ve already established as exceedingly comfortable. A big car at 218.5 inches long, the Ghost is packed with features that also make it heavy at 5,628 pounds. However, standard all-wheel drive and subtle engine tuning keep the 563-hp twin-turbocharged 6.75-liter V-12 tamed, rear-wheel steering makes the car feel shorter than it is, and the aforementioned air suspension and adaptive dampers counter much of the body lean. It still leans in corners but not so much that passengers will spill their Perrier-Jouet or have to look up from their MacBook Airs. It’s not nearly as sporty as a BMW 7-Series, but it’s also even more comfortable than the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, which is the benchmark luxury sedan for mere mortals.