The Best Aston Martin Ever


The Aston Martin V12 Vantage RS is a car to make you sweat on a cold day. Its acceleration is not unmanageable but it lives in a place right on the outer edge of your comfort zone. Instead of looking eagerly at the instruments to see how fast you're traveling, you actively try quite hard not to think about it.

As we rocket down the long, long, long straightaway at the Paul Ricard Circuit here in the sunny bit of wintry France, you wonder if there is any point returning your hand to the steering wheel for that ever-so-brief pause between feeding this car's insatiable appetite for gears with the shift lever. You do anyway, because guiding this thing with just one hand on the helm seems a long way from a good idea.

As you reach the end of the 1.1-mile straight, it's clear that very little work has been done on the car's aerodynamics because the steering is worryingly light and the car starts to wander across the track.

Bloody hell. Six hundred horsepower and $300,000. The Aston Martin V12 Vantage RS is not for the faint of heart.

The 600-hp Barrier

Because the car you're looking at is the only Aston Martin V12 Vantage RS currently in existence and has been designed as a concept car to sit on a show stand and not rocket up the public road, it is entirely illegal on the road and can, therefore, only be driven on a test track. But unlike most concept cars — whose doors start to fall off if you drive them at much more than 30 mph — this one is still yelling for more when we have to brake for the corner at the end of the back straight at — conservatively — 175 mph. It'll go 200 mph if you have enough room.

At its most basic (as it is described on the tin, in a manner of speaking), this is an Aston Vantage with its 4.3-liter V8 replaced by the 6.0-liter V12 used by the Aston Martin DB9 and Aston Martin DBS. But describing this car as a Vantage with a V12 motor is like calling Michelangelo a handy interior decorator — true, but not exactly to the point.

As we described recently in our First Look, the V12 Vantage RS is so much more than this. For a start, the engine is neither the 450-hp V12 used in the DB9 nor the 510-hp version used by the DBS. Instead the RS features a full race engine with a whole host of expensive modifications from forged pistons to dry sump lubrication that allow it to pump out a mighty 600 hp.

The English Like Hot Rods, Too

It's hard to know just when 600 hp became the standard of measure in high performance. After all, General Motors and Mercedes-Benz AMG just recently stepped up with new 500-hp V8s to match the 500-hp Dodge V10. And now the 600-hp 2008 Dodge Viper ACR has been followed by the supercharged 600-hp Corvette ZR1. It's amazing that Aston Martin has been able to create its own entry in this splinter-size segment in just a few short months since last fall.

Though few speak out in public, the motor industry is not short of those who say that Aston Martin is going to find life hard now that it has returned to private ownership some 17 years after the company was sold to Ford in an almost moribund condition.

So Aston Martin has sought to make a small but significant gesture to those who claim that it was only as good as the Blue Oval behind it, and created a couple of limited-production cars in recent months. It also makes good business sense, as Lamborghini has shown us that specialty models keep a nameplate in the spotlight where the increasing number of millionaires in formerly overlooked corners of the globe can find it.

Fortunately Aston Martin CEO Dr. Ulrich Bez learned his chops while directing engineering at Porsche, BMW M and then Daewoo, so he has ensured that Aston Martin has invested in the right kind of hardware to serve it well in the long run, like its all-aluminum chassis architecture, the 4.3-liter V8 and the 6.0-liter V12.

All this makes the Aston Martin V12 Vantage RS the most extraordinary road car ever to display the winged badge of Aston Martin on its nose.

Power and (Less) Weight

But it's best not to be thinking such thoughts at the end of the long straight at Paul Ricard High Speed Test Track (HSTT), now a test facility after a long history as the site of races for Formula 1 and other road racing series.

You tread on the V12 Vantage's brake and then feel the pedal sink disconcertingly under your foot with little sign of any meaningful retardation. Then suddenly the temperature of the carbon-ceramic discs hits the optimum operating zone and the nose of the car dips, stability returns and your excess speed is discarded in an instant.

Given its early stage of development and the weight of the huge V12 engine in the nose of a car scaled for a V8, the Aston Martin V12 Vantage RS is astonishingly good in the corners. The steering feels precise and reassuringly heavy, guiding the nose of the car with unquestioned accuracy. Once in the corner, the Vantage RS feels neutral, progressive and, above all else, on your side.

It helps that the V12 Vantage does not weigh much more than a V8 Vantage. In fact, it weighs 287 pounds less than the 3,594-pound V8 Vantage thanks to the removal of things you don't need on the track, like air-conditioning, airbags and a chunk of acoustic insulation. A not-insubstantial weight saving also came from the use of carbon fiber for the hood, door liners and trunk lid.

Figure It Out

To put this in perspective, imagine a car weighing the same as a Ford Mondeo, only with the same power as the Aston Martin DBR9 racing car that won the GT category at the 24 Hours of Le Mans last year. You might expect the result to be certifiably insane. And you'd be right.

We estimate acceleration to 60 mph is around 3.5 seconds, with no more than the same amount of time again being required to get from 60 to 100 mph. So that's zero to 100 mph in a nice, round 7 seconds — which, as you will have noticed, is a perfectly respectable 0-60-mph time for most conventional performance cars.

And while the V12 in a DB9 or DBS sounds wonderfully invigorating at full throttle, this one is nothing less than savage. If you merely brush the accelerator while idling at a standstill, the V12 barks its approval. Give the pedal a proper stab and it will emit a howl of such ferocity that it makes you want to duck.

Indeed the Aston Martin V12 Vantage RS is an entirely intimidating car. It could land you in more trouble than you could conceive in less time than you could imagine, but only if you were treating the car with less than the respect it deserves.

You must be constantly aware not only of its power but also of its short wheelbase and the fact that traction control is provided by your right foot alone. If you aren't, then frankly you deserve what's coming. If you look after it, it will look after you.

The Competitive Spirit

The V12 Vantage RS is a new breed for Aston Martin. Even if you gaze into the mists of times, you'll find that despite the very sporting image of the company, it has mainly busied itself with building fast touring cars, more cruisers than bruisers. The normal Aston Martin V8 Vantage is pleasingly sporting but still very much an everyday, all-purpose machine, while the flagship Aston Martin DBS is clearly a grand touring car at heart, though admittedly a fairly rapid one.

Aston Martin's V12 Vantage RS is none of these things. It is a track-inspired weapon for the uncompromising driver. Much like Ferrari and Porsche, not to mention Aston Martin itself during the 1950s, Dr. Ulrich Bez's company is building its reputation on motorsports. Wherever you find sports car racing, you'll find the Aston Martin badge, from the 24 Hours of Le Mans to the FIA's GT4 series for production-based sports cars. The Aston Martin V12 Vantage RS bridges the gap between the company's racing cars and its road cars, much like the 1961 Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato, a car now worth as much as $4 million.

Aston Martin still hasn't made a final decision, but we can expect a production run of perhaps as many as 600 cars to begin this summer at a price of about $300,000. Perhaps it'll be worth as much as an Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato in 40 years' time.


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M

The thing, I love most about Aston is that, she keeps getting back sexier & sexier, every time ...!

And no doubt, Aston got power can turn more heads than any million dollar car around ...!