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The headlamps are surrounded by silver nickel and the polished 20-inch wheels have a new 10-spoke design. Looking to the back, there's a carbon diffuser which is functional and matches up to the undertray and front splitter. There is also what the DBS's designer, Marek Reichman, calls a 'rear flip', or what some would call a spoiler, albeit an integrated one.

Bond's DBS is 150 kilos lighter than the DB9, but whether this weight saving will make it to the expected limited production run of just 300 cars remains to be seen.

Let's hope the new colour does - 'Casino Ice', a deep grey with a blue tint that gives the car the reflectivity of liquid mercury. Or as Reichman puts it, "The paint on the bodywork is like a bodybuilder rubbing oil into his muscles to accentuate and define the surfaces."

Before Reichman and his design team got to work, they met the production team behind Casino Royale to talk about this new darker, tougher Bond, so they could make the car reflect this new mood. "It's been an amazing synergy between how the car looks and how Daniel Craig looks as the new Bond," claims Reichman.

Indeed, the interior of the DBS suits Craig because it was designed around him. The carbon fibre bucket seat has a 'memory foam' to mould and sculpt itself to his torso. The interior is dark and menacing, with lots of 'Naturanaub' leather - specially coated so it's grippy not slippy - on the steering wheel, instrument panel, doors and outboard sides of the seats.

And alongside the polished aluminium instruments and dials is a removable stopwatch (so you can time yourself on the track), but only James Bond gets the pod behind his seat to keep a crash helmet in.

I also discovered, by virtue of being nosy, that there is a secret compartment in the glovebox - if you push it a hidden drawer pops out with a handgun-shaped hole in it. By the time I had finished examining this very beautiful car, I was convinced that my life had an Aston Martin DBS-shaped hole in it.

"I think it's the combination of brutality and power which makes this car have such presence," suggests Aston C.E.O. Dr Ulrich Bez. "But it is an elegant and refined brutality." Amen to that. The combination of Daniel Craig's sexy, brutish Bond and this sexy, brutish car is going to be explosive. When Casino Royale is released, there won't be a dry pair of pants in the cinema.