Vanquish 2

VANQUISH.
 
Too busy bullying squirrels in the local park to notice 130 slavering pounds of incoming canine Exocet, a friend’s Heinz 57 mutt recently found itself the hapless recipient of a rigorous going over at the jaws of a particularly malevolent Doberman pinscher.
 
Unfortunately, my quick-thinking chum had heard that the only sure-fire way to stop a dog fight is to grab a stick and, erm, poke the offending hound in the rectum. However, finding no such accessory readily available he simply waded into the roiling, black and tan melee and, perhaps -with the benefit of hindsight- unwisely, used his finger.
 
I mention this because, the instant before the astonished Doberman whipped round and bit him really very severely indeed, it let rip with a single, spine-chilling doggy expletive which not only prompted a mass outbreak of Trooping the Colour amongst the hairs on the nape of my neck, but also happened to exactly replicate the quite incredible sound made by an Aston Martin Vanquish dropping down a cog from 4500rpm in third gear. Do not, nonetheless, try this at home.
 
Ask me ‘What is it about a Vanquish?’ then, and I’d have no hesitation in citing the noise above all else. On reflection, better make that a plural. Because, via an exhaust system artfully engineered to remove noise emission obsequious baffles from the equation both at idle and above 3900rpm, the Cosworth built, 5935cc, 48 valve V12 conjures a range of noises-off so glorious, unique and, let’s face it, downright addictive as to almost defy description.
 
And I say almost because, reluctant though I may be to tug the forelock in the direction of a fellow scribbler, One AA Gill encapsulated the sound of a Vanquish at full chat in a manner that even an entire weekend’s furious inhalation of Camel Lights and Famous Grouse cannot best: “If a Ferrari is Pavarotti” he opined, “and a TVR two butch lesbians making love in a bucket, then the Vanquish is Tom Jones bending over to pick up the soap in Strangeways’ shower block…”
 
Today, Aston Martin remains the only extant automotive marque to have no ‘side’ whatsoever. Whilst, through either envy or vegetarian politics, even the entirely venerable Bentley has come to be disparaged as a fat-cat conveyance by some, Aston sails regally by, entirely unbesmirched by bad karma of any kind. Just what is, then, about an Aston…?
 
Ask any Briton under 50 this question, and he will invariably cite a childhood encounter, further crystallised by some Kia-Ora sticky, James Bond antic or other, as the moment when the marque first indelibly imprinted itself upon his psyche.
 
So it’s somewhat ironic that the two German doctors who hold sway over Aston Martin today -Wolfgang Rietzle at the helm of Ford’s Aston owning Premiere Automotive Group, and Ulrich Bez of the company itself- should both inadvertently pronounce this car “Wank-Wish.” For, in the context of adolescent anorak aspiration, that pretty much sums up the torchlit-
tumescence fuelled meditations of successive generations of British schoolboys on the brand.
 
Indeed, whilst crushing the gently steaming exhaust emissions of the pre-internal combustion school of thoroughbred that habitually clops the carriageways of Lambourn Chase under massive 285/40 rubber, the Vanquish is beset by rafts of youngsters giving it more “caw” than a murder of crows. This is callow yoof of exactly the crafty-fag-in-bus-shelter age that will long remember the encounter, have it more than subliminally reinforced by the latest 007 caper, Die Another Day, and quietly hanker from here on in… Though, judging by the general demeanour of this particular mob, they’ll need to knit their own balaclavas and set about the Purdey with an hacksaw if they’re ever to muster the requisite £158,000.
 
The importance of Aston as acne distraction is not lost on the good Dr. Bez: “An 88 year old history keeps people interested” he recognises. “There’s no future without heritage. But the fascination starts with kids coming out of cinemas thinking ‘If I make it, I’ll have an Aston’. We’re working hard with those kids now, and the 007 films are a cheque for the future.” Which, allied to an impending requirement to sell 5000 cars per annum, makes the recent reinstatement of the marque as Bond’s fire-zone chariot of choice timely indeed.
 
“Aston is going to be known as a marque that is high-tech, modern, futuristic and glamorous -like Bond” Bez avers. “That’s why we want the association. A lot of nonsense has been spoken about the money involved in this deal, talk of us paying $100 million to be in the film. That’s all rubbish. This is merely a reciprocal arrangement between the film company and PAG; we all gain in marketing terms. Best of all” he continues, “the Vanquish doesn’t just play a cameo roll in the movie; this is a full reintroduction of James Bond to the car he should always be driving…” After all, just name me one school kid who’s come out of a Bond movie with his heart set on a BMW 7 Series when he grows up… I do so wish he had added.
 
“What’s important for us is to play our connection with Bond just right” Bez believes. “We won’t overplay the link -we don’t want to be naff about it.”
 
Er, a word in your shell-like Dr. Bez: You currently have two Vanquishes on your press fleet. And the car which, mercifully, I’m not driving today is finished in a unique, 007 silver hue and boasts door cill plaques reading ‘Aston Martin V12 Vanquish Hand Built in England for James Bond’. Now, call me old fashioned, but isn’t that about the naffest thing anyone could possibly do to an Aston? Show me a wealthy-enough who finds acceptability in an imaginary movie hero writ large across the threshold of the world’s most beautiful coupe, and I’ll show you, erm… Oh yes, I was forgetting, an American. Then again, there is, I suppose, always the Manchester United football squad…
 
Having very nearly run DB7 and Vanquish designer Ian Callum over in his own car on Newport Pagnell High Street (he just can’t keep away from that designer’s dream grille – “a permanent smile”), I thought it only polite, whilst dusting him off, to enquire after his take on the merits of the Bond connection. “In fact, the Aston product and Bond character have much in common” he considers. “They’re both cool, classy and British, with that edge of
wickedness… As to the Bond branded car; no, I didn’t know they’d done that. I would rather say don’t bother. It’s fine to put it in the movie, but over and above that the car should stand on its own two feet.”
 
For Callum, growing up in Britain in the 60s, Aston Martin was the exotic marque. “Thanks to Thunderball, I grew up with the DB5 plugged into my memory banks” he recalls. “So penning Astons felt very natural from the word go. And there were two or three in the Dumfries of my childhood; I saw a silver gold DB4 twice a week. Wonderful. That car has always had a special place in my mind. When I started work here, it was all about trying to capture what those encounters meant for me then; power blended with restrained elegance, an understated confidence… Rather than overt and pretentious, an Aston has to just right . You need to understand the restraint of the British psyche to do a car like this” he believes. “What is it about an Aston? It’s a lack of vulgarity…”
 
Rowan Pelling, enchanting editor of the Erotic Review, deliciously draped across an F1 Ferrari as the Vanquish takes its place in the studio cover shot queue, concurs wholeheartedly. “So beautiful, so sexy, engine so exhuberant…” she croons at Callum’s creation. “I wish you’d asked me to talk about this instead… When you’re strolling across a pedestrian crossing and you look down and see a Ferrari, somehow there’s a quiet corner of your brain that just can’t help thinking ‘wanker.’ But the Aston introduces itself so subtly… Like a beautiful woman who walks into the room and no one notices at first; no false tat, just a simple black dress. Anyone driving this has great sex appeal bestowed upon them…” Well, almost anyone Rowan.
 
Nonetheless, wherever I scorch in the Vanquish, those motorists not flashing their lights gesticulate with all the vigour of one sharing the cabin with a large, angry hornet. And I’m on the cusp of conjuring a police conspiracy to blanket the countryside with mobile speed traps when it dawns that this is simply a remarkably overt display of affection for the marque’s latest offspring. Even a biker, with whom we risk a brief, yet massive, hoon, tips me the nod from beneath his smoked Plexiglas glans of office. The ultimate confirmation of universal acceptance.
 
No other car exhudes quite the same intensity of purpose to its driver when stationary. The repeated unleashing of 460bhp and 400lb/ft of torque generates a deal of warmth, and the Vanquish’es bonnet top vents leak hot air so effusively that the treacly heat haze shimmering at the windscreen is positively mirage worthy; oh look, isn’t that a branch of Barclays Bank..?
 
With Cosworth assemble this sublime V12 for the Vanquish you will, sadly, no longer find a plaque boasting the builder’s name under the bonnet. Chris Bennett, wedded to Aston since 1986, built the last engine to leave the factory -a V8- in the summer of 2000. “That was lovely job” he sighs. “80 hours to build, half an engine a week… And what really got under my skin was starting it up for the first time on the test-bed. Always did, of course…”
 
Chris has now metamorphosed into something called “Process Leader for Chassis 2 Area.” But you get the feeling he’d be happy cleaning latrines with a toothbrush as long as he could stay on. Whilst hard times have forced Bodywork Inspector Dave Hardwick to part company with Aston twice before,
but he’s never quite managed to snap the elastic: “Its always been a passion to work for Aston since I was in my 20s. I started on the DBS, they kept laying me off, and I just kept coming back. It’s just the name really” he smiles with the blatant contentment of one sitting atop a giant pat of warm butter. “And the commitment of the workforce to the marque.”
 
“It was every young boys ambition” agrees Stuart Bull, whose Final Inspection plaque lurks under the bonnet of every Vanquish. “I was doing a school project down in Devon, wrote to David Brown, came up to the factory and discovered he didn’t just make tractors.” Indeed not…
 
Paddle-shift learning curve all but conquered (Aston say it takes a day), The Vanquish is little short of a license thief. The car is amazingly quiet at speed as long as you keep the revs below the baffle exorcising 3900rpm which, in any gear longer than third, you must. The alternative being to simply drive to the nearest plod emporium, hand over the keys, and select yourself a nice cosy cell for the night.
 
The problem, of course, is that noise. So intoxicating is the unfortunate Tom Jones’ accompaniment to that long, long-legged surge of relentless acceleration in every gear, so malevolent the Doberman bark of automatically blipped throttle down changes, that you’re guaranteed be going like an absolute bastard a scant half mile from the factory gates.
 
You do not sneak anywhere in a Vanquish… Standing hard on massive discs to rein in nearly two tons of motor car that’s travelling, erm, somewhat quicker than you’d realised, paddle grabbing down through the box, fat rubber trammelling and squirming over rough surfaces transmitted in detail through necessarily firm undercarriage, the Aston announces its arrival at village outskirts with such unalloyed enthusiasm that you just know you’ll be massively over-cooking it, accidentally on purpose, all over again as the next 30mph limit hoves into view. Addictive. Want. Now.
 
Cannibals, I’m told, consider the ball of the thumb to be far and away the tastiest tit-bit on the human frame. Which leaves me roughly £158,000 plus the cost of a return flight to Brazil short. Because, cheap red plastic Britax Oystercatcher beak clock hands aside, just about the only irksome ingredient of a Vanquish is the steering wheel: It’s irritatingly convex at exactly the point where the balls of your thumb seek a comfy, concave nest. And so badly do I wish to own this car that I’d happily paddle up the Amazon in search of a grateful snack recipient – hors d’oeuvre plate already ensconced in lower lip- tomorrow.