Vanquish Volante enjoys opulence at its own pace
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — There are places where you can properly enjoy a $315,000, 565-horsepower, rear-wheeldrive convertible shod with summer-only tires. This was not one of them.
As visibility dropped even further, the slick-backed mountain road snaked ever upwards into thick mist and torrential rain. The exterior temperature gauge clicked off the numbers: 10 degrees above freezing. Six degrees. Two.
And yet, inside the 2014 Aston Martin Vanquish Volante, it felt as snug as the inside of a Warwickshire pub. The three-layer fabric top bottled in the warmth, the heated seats kept both passengers’ crumpets well toasted, and the six-speed automatic picked its way smoothly through the gears. The massive V-12 thrummed away contentedly at a distance, like the far-off heartbeat of a trans-oceanic liner.
When a chunk of the southern California mountainside starts thinking it’s wintertime in the British Midlands, it turns out it’s perfectly OK to be in an English-style supercar. The rain came down hard, but the Vanquish Volante preserved its composure with a stiff upper lip.
Reading through the history of Aston Martin, stretching back over a century to a shed in the English countryside, is a bit like listening to the king in Monty Python and the Holy Grail recounting the construction of his castle. First, Lionel Martin and Reginald Bamford founded the company. Then it sank into the swamp. Then David Brown bought the company after the war. It sank into the swamp.
Then Victor Gauntlett bought a 12.5 per cent stake in the company and allowed his personal V-8 Vantage to be used in the Bond film The Living Daylights, in the hope the publicity would spur sales. What happened next was that the company burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp.
But the next time, with Ford at the helm, it stayed up! Sort of.
It’s been a tumultuous hundred years, the company changing hands and suffering near-mortal sales results, and each time the Aston Martin brand doggedly cries, “Tis but a scratch!” and keeps on coming.
It’s not an ordinary car company, and it doesn’t build ordinary cars.
What’s special about this particular car isn’t just the exotic material which it’s made from, but the shape that it takes. Wasp-waisted and curvaceous, it’s simply gorgeous. And while there are numerous small details that stand out — the way the windshield glass extends right up to the roofline, the rear tail lights that resemble the spread wings of a hieroglyphic eagle on Tutankhamen’s tomb — it’s more the way the shape works in its entirety as a whole. It’s driveable automotive sculpture.
Then there are some issues that are (hopefully) down to the pre-production status of the cars tested. Panel gaps are not quite as meticulously even as bragged about. The seams in the corners where the roof meets the windshield look a bit messy. Even if the quality assurance folks get these details fine-tuned, the in-car technology will doubtless remain slightly wonky. Those glass buttons look fantastic, but you often have to press them multiple times to get a reaction. It’s a bit like wrestling with an elderly iPhone. Also, it’s borderline impossible to read the digital temperature readout on the controls, with glare washing out the display whether the top’s up or down.
But then, nitpicking an Aston Martin over technological foibles is a bit like complaining that Buckingham Palace doesn’t have enough flat-screen TVs. Sure, the navigation screen looks a bit dated, but when sitting in such a beautiful car, would you ever be so bored as to care about that?
Which brings us to the question of whether the performance levels of Aston Martin’s fastest-ever convertible can match its sizable price. Let me paint you a picture: You’re on holiday in California, walking along the pavement in a small town on the edge of the desert. At the last stoplight on the road heading out of town, a Vanquish Volante pulls up next to a Nissan GT-R, today’s modern high-performance yardstick.
The light goes green and the GT-R engages launch control, fat tires sticking like glue and twin-turbo V-6 emitting a forced-induction rasp like a dog choking on a chicken bone. In seconds, it’s a quickly receding dot on the horizon.
The guy in the Aston-Martin rolls off the line, lowering the top as he does so, bathing in the tune of twelve cylinders worth of genteel thunder. The big Vanquish lopes along the desert road, the sun glittering brightly off its curving flanks.
Now, which one would you rather be driving?