The new Aston Martin Vanquish has been revealed, bringing the British brand’s V12-engined flagship back to the fore after a six-year hiatus.
With a whopping 824bhp and 738lb ft of torque, plus a stiffer chassis than its DBS predecessor, it’s poised to fight for the super grand tourer crown.
But it’s not all about measurable qualities. Sometimes, sheer charm alone is enough for a car to work its way into a hearts – which was very much the case with the Mk1 Vanquish.
As a reminder of that car’s charisma, here’s an extract from when we drove a Vanquish S across Europe in 2005, charting Aston’s then-ongoing revolution.
You can read the full feature in the Autocar Archive, where you can search and read through 129 years of the weekly magazine at the click of a button.
26 July 2005: Slower than an Evo. Uncomfy to drive. Ancient switchgear. I love it.
There are many ways of detecting greatness in a car, but none quite so reliable as its appearance after 500 hard and fast miles on the road. If you climb out, take one look at its mud-spattered flanks and bug-splattered nose and start casting around for a car wash, I’m afraid that while your car may or may not be any good, it is most certainly not great. But if the sight of several thousand examples of the local fauna rendered two-dimensional by the apocalyptic introduction of your car to their backsides makes you relive every last glorious mile, believe me, you have a true great on your hands.
Some cars just look better this way. And however good you may think Aston’s Vanquish S looks polished to within a millimetre of its primer on a show stand, it is as nothing compared to how it looks after several hundred miles of high-speed European exercise. The hours of accumulated crap add purpose and context to what is otherwise mere beauty, to create a sight much more stirring than when it started.
Our start was in Newport Pagnell. The association of this place with Aston Martin is extraordinary, with even the road signs proclaiming it to be ‘the home of Aston Martin.’ But it’s not where Aston Martin started life (Feltham) nor where most have been built (Bloxham) nor even where the HQ is today (Gaydon). Yet we all consider Newport as the marque’s true home.
Our purpose was to take a Vanquish – the only car still built in Newport – and drive to Cologne where, in a very small corner of a very large Ford plant, all of Aston Martin’s engine production now takes place. Having produced Astons non-stop since 1959, the Vanquish will be the last to be built in Newport Pagnell and, as I drove north from London to meet it, I wondered what former chairmen like David Brown and Victor Gauntlett would have felt about such a large part of Aston’s soul now being built by the Germans.