From Zagato to Foxborough: Aston Martin’s Tom Brady Signature Edition Vanquish
Among his many talents, Tom Brady has proven he can customize a $300,000 car without having to buy one.
We do that on automaker websites every week, except our configurations resemble nothing more than a 72-dot-per-inch JPG.
Brady’s dark blue Aston Martin is very real, as Gaydon will build a dozen next year. The Tom Brady Signature Edition Vanquish S Volante is a showpiece for Aston’s Q division, which invites customers to mix and match a nearly unlimited batch of materials and colors.
Brady, the five-time NFL Super Bowl champ and the patron saint of Massachusetts, has been shilling for the supercar brand since Aston announced a deal in May.
Now we have a Vanquish with Brady’s John Hancock scrawled on the sill plates.
The quarterback/spokesmodel can really click his way through a configurator. We like Brady’s choice of Ultramarine Black (we see blue) over Dark Knight leather. Carbon fiber dresses up the rear valance, front chin spoiler, sills, side vents, grille surround, mirror caps, and the book-matched dash trim. The black wheels provide a dusty, powder-coated effect.
Yellow Aston Martin logos, violet knurled-metal climate controls, and light brown leather shift paddles brighten the otherwise dark and stormy color scheme. A couple of TB12 badges on the headrests and fenders actually are advertising Brady’s TB12 line of nutrition products, which he describes as a “holistic approach to achieving and sustaining peak performance.”
Otherwise, Brady’s Vanquish is a standard-grade Aston droptop, its older 580-hp V-12 providing a luscious, naturally aspirated soundtrack without any artificial enhancements. Well, there is one other thing: Reports indicate that Aston recalibrated the tire-pressure-monitoring system to the quarterback’s specific thresholds, although there is no empirical or direct evidence of any kind to support such an unreasonable claim.