Even Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is developing a smaller car, although the reasoning behind its new RR4 has little to do with $4 a gallon gas prices.

The RR4 sedan, as the car is now known, is targeting customers that Rolls-Royce's archrival Bentley attracted with its Continental GT and Flying Spur cars -- people who are extremely rich but perhaps more discreet than buyers of traditional Rolls-Royce Phantom and Bentley Arnage limousines.

Sketches released Tuesday by Rolls-Royce, owned by Germany's BMW AG, show a muscular sedan with big wheels and a high belt line. "The RR4 has a more informal presence than the Phantom models with a greater emphasis on driving," Rolls-Royce chief designer Ian Cameron said. "This is expressed through its slightly smaller dimensions and more organic form, yet with powerful, purposeful proportions."

The RR4, coming out in 2010, will be built at Rolls-Royce's Goodwood facilities in Britain. Recent spy photos reveal a model that is less distinctive than the Phantom but replicates some of its features, such as the coach doors opening from the central pillar. The RR4 also will share some underpinnings with the next BMW 7 Series sedan, but will have its own new engine -- and possibly a diesel option.

In recent years, German carmakers BMW and Volkswagen AG updated their newly acquired British luxury marques to lift sales. But they overestimated the demand for ultra-high end limousines in the $220,000 to $400,000 range, as did Daimler AG, which revived the Maybach marque to compete in that segment.

The hottest new entries have been Bentley's smaller and more affordable Continental GT and Flying Spur cars, starting at around $170,000. They account for most of the 10,014 Bentley cars sold worldwide last year, compared with BMW's global sales of 1,010 vehicles in 2007.

But according to British trade magazines, the RR4 is expected to cost considerably more than the small Bentleys.

"Even in these hard times, the number of super affluent people -- globally and in the United States -- continues to increase," said Wesley Brown, partner at Los Angeles-based research and consulting firm Iceology.

But many of these customers, particularly in Europe and in the United States, prefer cars they can drive themselves to traditional chauffeur-driven limousines.

"As you move to the younger affluent," Brown says, "if they're spending that kind of money, they want to drive the vehicle."