Fall through the looking glass, go through the wardrobe, hit all the buttons on the Wonkavator, or use the Hogwarts Express destination through the wizard school and there’s Aston Martin’s updated, five-door Rapide S sports car. It’s engineered on an alternate reality where up is left, down is sideways, rabbits use top hats, and four-door exotic sports cars is the norm.
It’s an upside down universe where practicality is the burden, beauty always trumps convenience, along with a 550-hp 5.9-liter V-12 will be considered acceptable and ordinary. The car is a pain in the ass, and wonderful for this.
First seen as a idea back in 2006, the Rapide is an uncompromised figurine. It’s a dramatic sliver of a car, using a windscreen very brutally raked that it’s difficult to find out a few overhead traffic lamps through the driver’s couch, along with a fastback roof that will have even Bilbo Baggins ducking to enter from the back doors. But once it got into production back in 2010 plus quickly became sales-proof, the large complaint was that it wasn’t fast enough. In Narnia, 470 horsepower may seem like lots, however in Vehicle and Driver’s community, which left the regular ancient Rapide behind muggle-spec opponents such as the bulbous Porsche Panamera Turbo S. And Aston’s said 5.0-second zero-to-60-mph performance? Today, five seconds is sufficient time to conquer Middle-earth.
Therefore Aston has rewritten a Rapide fable using the form of a company’s current AM11 V-12 that debuted in the new Vanquish. A changed block is stuffed with the latest crank plus capped by latest cylinder heads together with variable timing for both that intake and also wear out cams plus a different “big wing” intake a lot more sucking in via 0.2-inch-larger throttle bodies. The re-machined burning spaces circulate improved along with a a little bit increased retention percentage. All that thumps output around 550 hp in the shouting 6750 rpm and 457 pound-feet of top torque on 5000 rpm with, Aston asserts, significantly better torque creation under four thousand rpm. There are no turbos, no superchargers, and no dark arts involved.
To deal with European pedestrian-protection standards, Aston provides installed a engine 0.8 inches reduced in its bay?although upgrading the front grille plus cover. Throw in LED lighting and 20-inch tires inside 245/35ZR-20 front along with 295/30ZR-20 back Bridgestone wheels, which is a vehicle that visually punches its own Golden Ticket. Which noted, what remains virtually the same is Aston’s glue- along with rivet-bonded aluminum space-frame structures, and also the rear-mounted six-speed automatic transaxle.
