Features
The art of fourplay
Top Gear proudly presents an exclusive look at the new Aston Martin Rapide. It's the sexiest four-door we've seen
(For more pictures and details about the new four-door Aston, check out the February issue of Top Gear magazine)
Good God. Is there no stopping this man? Downstairs, Aston Martin's third design chief in five years, Marek Reichman, has still to get all four doors on his new Rapide concept, Aston's fifth new car inside 12 months.
Meanwhile upstairs, Dr Ulrich Bez, Chairman and CEO, is already talking about the yet-to-be-seen convertible Vantages and the hot Vantages that are, like the Rapide, not far away from the showroom.
He's making a point, of course, Bez is always making a point about something. Right now it's all about Aston Martin's ground-breaking 'V/H architecture', or what the more proletarian car makers might call 'a platform'.
V/H, a glued and riveted extruded aluminium tub with a backbone of carbon fibre, is what the Rapide is all about.
At its most basic, the Rapide is a long-wheelbase DB9... but only in the same way a Vantage is a short wheelbase DB9. That is, in its heart and soul, not the same at all.
'It's five metres long. That makes it the size of a Mercedes S-Class, or a Maserati Quattroporte'
Vantage is the punchy but pretty runt; Rapide the beautiful, über-cool, elder sibling with the wardrobe to die for.
Yet both exist because of the DB9's donor DNA and its flexible V/H architecture... as do the DB9 Volante, the DBR9 and the DBRS9.
Geddit? You don't have a choice when Bez is strafing you with a mixture of enthusiasm and didactic.
Five cars inside 12 months is only possible if, underneath, they are all fundamentally the same. So get over it; this is how Aston managed four-door cars in the past. Kinda.
Now once again in the 21st century, the skill of building cars is making them different on top, and they don't come any more different than the Rapide.
It's five metres long. That makes it the size of an S-Class. Or a Quattroporte. Or, most likely, the forthcoming Porsche Panamera.
Funny that. Especially when you consider Dr Bez used to work for Porsche and some say he left under a cloud. And that the Panamera, as if we need point out, is still little more than an incredulous concept sketch.
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