ITS COLOUR SUDDENLY BECOMES LIQUID, LINES AND CREASES EMBELLISHING A SHAPE THAT OOZES DRAMA

before long, the tourists descend. Busses bobble into our vantage point, the only highlight delivered when a B-double blasts the crowd with its horn, effectively communicating that standing in the middle of the road for a selfie isn’t very smart.

For all its heart-stopping natural beauty, Lindis is actually a drag to drive. There are too many trucks, too much salt grit to go quickly, too many erratic RVS, their progress haphazard and windows fogged as excited passengers barrage the driver to stop for a picture.

Over a lamb pie at the Wrinkly Ram in the sleepy town of Omarama, we take stock of the roads so far. They’ve been good, with flashes of brilliance, and mercifully the weather has held, but we need more room to play with. Less traffic. More corners. “I know a place,” says Vaughan. “Ohau road, just before the salmon farms.”

It’s one of those innocuous turns I’d have driven straight past. A left hander that splits from the main road at a right angle, its beginning arrow straight and flat as you drive headlong into the mountains on the horizon. It’s totally deserted and quickly becomes challenging, straight sections giving way to fast crests that unsettle the car and off-camber kinks that tighten unexpectedly. I cycle through the suspension modes, double wishbones up front and multi-links out back doing their best to absorb the bumpy surface. The damping is nicely judged in Sport. It doesn’t jiggle or jolt, though there’s no escaping the overarching sense of tautness. Track and Sport+ modes are too stiff here, the rear bucking and skipping on corner exit as I grab big armfuls of corrective lock. It’s quickly apparent the ideal set-up is Sport dampers, Track powertrain. The sense that this is a car that gets better the harder you drive returns; its grip on terra firma is vice-like, body control is kept neatly in check, the steering sensitive to load and meaty when you’re attacking. Does it have the Braille-like feel of a 911? Or the chassis precision, suspension subtlety and control?

Not quite, but Aston’s recruitment of some of the best chassis gurus in the business – people like ex-lotus man Matt Becker, Mclaren’s Chris Goodwin, and even a few tasty hires from Ferrari – is plain to feel.

We finish our detour as the daylight starts to fade, the craggy, cloud-cloaked peak of Mount Cook tantalisingly out of reach. Without enough time to make it to the top, we cruise slowly along the edges of the powder blue canals that line its base.

There’s a moment when the light goes soft, the sky turns pink and after setting the car up for a final static shot, all three of us stop. It’s eerily silent. No shuttering of Vaughan’s camera. No footsteps as Dwight rushes to get another angle. We all just stare.

Behind the Vantage a perfect full moon glows. The Aston’s colour, which has seemed to suck in all of the light around it all day, suddenly changes. It becomes liquid, lines and creases in the body that were hidden suddenly embellishing a shape that oozes visual drama.

The moment stretches like an eclipse until the dark night reclaims the bluey black paint and all that’s left is the thin, uninterrupted light signature that stretches across the Vantage’s wide rump.

I pause as I slip into the seat for the three-hour schlep back to Queenstown. It’s better than I was expecting, this steelier-eyed Vantage. Not perfect, and certainly not a giant killer, but bloody good, straight out of the box, which isn’t always the case with Astons. It feels special, somehow comfortable in its own skin, and just like the untapped potential of the roads that sweep up towards Mount Cook, there’s real promise in the reminder that for the reborn Vantage, this is just the beginning.