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2 November 2020
Review: Arctic, Culture and Climate at the British Museum
5 November 2020Best of both worlds
The Aston Martin Rapide S combines impressive performance with a comfortable ride and elegant looks
C all it hard-nosed professionalism or maybe simply innate cynicism, but we at Halcyon Lifestyle see a lot of very expensive high-performance vehicles and often find ourselves somewhat underwhelmed. Stepping outside our fly-bitten hard carapace however and some cars actually do have the capacity to warm the cockles of our hearts.
So it is with the Aston Martin Rapide S – one of the very few to be handed back to the manufacturer with a genuine feeling of loss.
At first we struggled to identify the true identity of this elongated cruiser. Why would you design two extra doors (and seats) into a vehicle with a 6-litre V12 behemoth under the hood? Is this two-ton Rapide S, with its new rear-mounted ZF transaxle, eight-speed gearbox (from the Vanquish), retuned dampers and springs, stiffer anti-roll bars and upgraded Bridgestone tires a performance sports car or a high-testosterone family saloon?
When you combine the above with a 0-60 speed of just 4.2 seconds and a top speed of 203mph you can see where the confusion lies. And just what could all this mean when you’re sitting in the back?
Happily things soon resolved themselves. Barely half a mile down the road and the Rapide S’s identity landed in our minds with all the clarity of the impressive Bose sound system.
She is most definitely a sports car.
She is most definitely a saloon car.
At around five metres long she really shouldn’t float over bumpy roads nor turn into corners with the alacrity of a mayfly. But she does
This might sound like a dichotomy or a hedging of bets and that the confusion remains unresolvable, but it’s not. Let us assure you that the rear seats can accommodate the larger gentleman (we tried) and, while you wouldn’t necessarily want to travel from London to Edinburgh in the back, there is a feeling of snug comfort rather than claustrophobia which is ameliorated by some nice touches such as the DVD screens with remote control and wireless-branded headphones.
Getting in and out of the back was an exercise in biological origami, but still… you’ll be behind the wheel. If you’re a family man you just know that putting the kids in the back for an extended journey would not result in incessant questions of ‘are we there yet?’. The little darlings will be silent all the way from A to B.
Up front is where it’s at. Cruising along Britain’s highways and byways with the volcanic amounts of torque available under your right foot produced a wonderful glow of unexpectedly satisfied circumspection. Knowing that, should you have even a vague inclination of such a desire, you could blow that tailgating boy racer in his souped-up hot hatch into the middle of the week after next allows you to raise a lazy eyebrow in derision and let him by.
Sitting in your ergonomically contoured pilot’s seat surrounded by swathes of hand-sewn leather could distract from the performance potential while you luxuriate in what was described to us as ‘the intoxicating scent of the saddlery.’ But nothing really detracts from what this car can do. At around five metres long she really shouldn’t float over bumpy roads nor turn into corners with the alacrity of a mayfly. But she does. And she leaves a grin on your face with the joy of it all.
There is the odd niggle, though. The infotainment system is infuriatingly ‘yesterday’ and user-unfriendly. We don’t see ourselves as world-defining experts in digital interfaces by any extremes but we do have a reasonable competency. And yet it took us 120 miles to work out (Aston didn’t provide us with a user guide) how to change the input source from the radio to the CD player.
Ally this to a coffee cup holder that is irritatingly sited slap bang in front of the plethora of console buttons meant that, while the resulting wall of sound was impressive, the journey to it was frustrating. At least we got to listen to that gorgeous engine while waiting for our dubious musical choice.
Getting in and out of the back was an exercise in biological origami, but still… you’ll be behind the wheel
The final niggle was with the indicator column. The looseness of this meant that turning left often allowed us to blind any oncoming traffic with our high beams. However, we’ll ascribe this to the heavy-handedness of ham-fisted journalists not being overly concerned with delicacy in a vehicle they would soon return to the manufacturer rather than to build quality.
And that’s it really. Two and a half niggles in the whole experience speaks to us of a car that is pretty robust both internally and externally.
All in all this is a car we’re sad to hand back. An automobile with a starting price of around £150,000 could surely never be considered a daily driver. But this one can be and the smile it engenders brightens up even the rainiest of days. If the electronic interfaces and centre console issues can be ironed out then we would have to consider which limb to sell in order to own one.
Actually that’s easy. The left leg – it’s the one part of you that isn’t engaged in the Rapide S experience.
Words: TG
