After five days in the Rolls-Royce Ghost, my friends and I have decided that what the company really needs to build is a mini version – something you can actually use on British roads without offending people.

Sadly, the Ghost is simply too large to be a practical tool in the UK. This is a car that is best used on the wide open expanses of the Middle East and the USA.

Just parking the thing is a nightmare. It’s too long for British parking spaces – and God help you if you hold people up in the manoeuvre too. This is the car everybody loves to hate.

And that really is the one major drawback about the Rolls that you won’t find in many car reviews or brochures – you have to have a very thick skin to drive it.

Silence is golden? Well, not if you are designing a luxurious modern car. These days, pretty much every expensive motor I test is equipped with a button that opens the ports on the exhaust to let a roar out.

And if there’s no button, like in an Aston Martin, then the exhaust has been tweaked to produce a suitably atmospheric grumble. There’s one fitted to my Porsche 911 S but to be honest, it’s pretty tiresome if you are trying to listen to the radio or touring.

So what an unexpected joy it is to slip into the Ghost and discover there is no such vulgarity. It really is true what they say, you can only hear the clock ticking in a Rolls (actually you can’t because even the clock is silent these days).

In fact, my only major cock-up in the Ghost has been pressing the start button twice. The V12 is so quiet you can’t hear the thing start. Try that in a Maserati…