BOUNTY
GEAR BOX
Conquering The Aston Martin Vanquish is back and ready to take on all comers. Just don’t go looking for the invisibility button.
Sound the trumpets, bang the drum! The car with the coolest name ever to grace a boot lid is back. And, no, we don’t mean the Daihatsu Naked, or even the Isuzu GIGA 20 Light Dump – although that comes a close second. We refer, of course, to the mighty Aston Martin Vanquish, originally launched in 2001 and last seen sliding around a melting ice palace in the James Bond flick, Die Another Day. Bond’s car was notable for its ability to turn invisible, and sadly in 2007 the real Vanquish did just that, disappearing from Aston’s model range to be replaced by the more prosaically monikered – but still stonkingly good – DBS. Fast forward to the present day and the Vanquish is on the warpath once more, with its maker touting the two-door, 2+2 seater grand tourer as the first in a new breed of future Astons timed to mark the brand’s 100th anniversary next year. And sure enough, while the name will bring a cosy glow of recognition from Aston Martin fans, in engineering terms Vanquish mk2 represents something of a leap forward for the venerable British marque. At first glance the new Vanquish doesn’t appear to be a huge break from tradition (no bad thing in an Aston Martin) so you might be wondering why those taut edges and flowing curves are
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leaving you just a little more breathless than usual. The answer is carbon fibre. And lots of it. Every single one of the Vanquish’s panels is made from the stuff, from the sculpted roof to the tarmacskimming side skirts, splitter and rear diffuser. As well as providing increased strength and reduced weight, building with carbon enabled the designers to create seamless, complex panel forms that would otherwise have been impossible (the ‘Aero Duct’ spoiler integrated into the rear section is a good example). The result is a car that appears to have leapt straight from the pages of a designer’s sketchpad, with nothing lost in translation. Perhaps that’s why we get the feeling we could lose six demerit points just by looking at it. The new Vanquish is also the first Aston Martin to be built on the company’s fourth generation ‘VH’ (Vertical/Horizontal) platform. Where previous iterations were constructed from solidcast aluminium, the new structure uses hollowcast technology, and boasts yet more carbon fibre components. The front chassis section is now 13 per cent lighter than its DBS equivalent, and Aston Martin claim a 25 per cent increase in overall rigidity.
WORDS Sam Tinson PHOTOGRAPHY Courtesy Aston Martin
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