06 Oct 04
Unlike both the DB9 and forthcoming V8, the Vanquish is still made at the old Newport Pagnell factory, where they've been building Astons since before a James Bond film franchise was a twinkle in Cubby Broccoli's eye. Unlike its younger, cheaper siblings too, certain panels of the Vanquish S are still rather charmingly constructed by nothing more technologically advanced than men hitting them with hammers. That's one reason a Vanquish S takes 800 hours to build, twice as long as a DB9 and forty times longer than your average tin box.
You may struggle to spot the difference between a Vanquish and Vanquish S in the flesh - there's a more rounded nose, an integrated tail spoiler and a front splitter, but under the skin the changes have been as comprehensive as those on the surface are modest. The suspension, steering and brakes have been heavily revised - the latter not a moment too soon - the gearing has been lowered and the power hiked from a 460bhp to 520bhp. Aston Martin maintains that the 'standard' Vanquish will continue, but they did this when the six-cylinder DB7 became the 12-cylinder DB7 Vantage: in practice no-one wanted the older car and it simply slipped off the price sheets without Aston ever officially canning it. The price rises from £163,000 to £174,000, which seems unlikely to be enough to deter buyers at this end of the market, particularly given the transformation in the car.
Cleverly leaving its near perfect appearance almost unchanged and blowing the entire budget on improving the driving experience has worked wonders. While the old Vanquish felt suitably brisk, this one is savage, quicker by far than its 4.8sec 0-62mph sprint (an improvement of just 0.2sec) suggests. In fact it will now hit 100mph under 10sec, the current benchmark for truly high performance cars.
