Aston Martin gives its big, V12-engined GT concept one last spin, with more power and technical commitment than ever
The Aston Martin Vanquish is another brand-new, V12-powered, front-engined exotic super-GT to get stuck into, hot on the heels of the one you may have read about only a few weeks ago – the Ferrari 12Cilindri.The Vanquish joins the Ferrari among a dwindling number of 12-cylinder sports cars setting out to battle upstream, fingers in ears and screaming blood and thunder, for the next half decade or so at least, against a swelling current of pressure to downsize, electrify and generally cut out the old-school combusting of hydrocarbons in one of motordom’s very grandest engine configurations.Good luck to them, I say. This, you’ll probably already have surmised, will not be a review that lampoons how power outputs have grown to ridiculous and untappable extremes, or that laments the impact that such power has on cars really meant for fast, laid-back, long-distance cruising.The new Vanquish is certainly a car that could provoke those kinds of reactions. It’s very fast; very, very powerful; necessarily quite purposeful in its grip and body control levels; and, yes, it probably would make a better fast GT if it were, in fact, smaller, lighter, slower and generally gave its contact patches a bit less to do. But never mind all that. The bigger point, and one worth celebrating in 2024 as riotously as we may fleetingly be allowed, is that Aston Martin has found a way to make it at all. A couple of years ago, when I drove the last-generation Aston Martin V12 Vantage, I worried that it might be Gaydon’s last-ever series-production V12 (unicorns like the Aston Martin Valkyrie, Victor and Valour notwithstanding). It would have been a rather unfortunate way for Aston’s 5.2-litre V12 to sign off.But, thankfully, it was nothing of the sort. The Aston Martin V12 sports car lives again. And how.
