Twenty years ago, the first customer received the keys to their new V12 Vanquish. Without extras, the two-seat coupé (there was also a 2+2) cost £158,000. By the time production of the model and its sister car, the more powerful V12 Vanquish S, ended in 2007, just 2600 examples had left Aston Martin’s Newport Pagnell factory. This modest number helps explain why, today, prices for good used Vanquishes start at a solid £60,000. At the other extreme, the best cars cost at least twice that.
With a monster 5.9-litre V12, in a choice of standard 460bhp or 520bhp S forms, heroic thirst and even more heroic servicing bills, you would imagine it’s a rich person’s occasional toy. But a surprising number of cars advertised have done close to 50,000 miles, while one we found, a 2003-reg manual, has done 94,000 (it costs £55,000). Its owner has had it for 15 years, during which time it’s had what he calls a few ‘Aston Martin moments’ but nothing serious. “Cars like the Vanquish need to be driven regularly, and mine proves they can take it,” he says. His experience supports what Terry Couzens of Vantage Engineering says about the Vanquish being reliable and easily up to the rigours of daily driving, even if you must nurse the clutch in town.
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The model marked a new chapter in Aston Martin’s story. It was a very modern sports car with a bonded aluminium chassis built around a carbonfibre transmission tunnel. Elements of traditional craftsmanship remained in the hand-finished aluminium body panels and the engine, which bears the name of its builder. Of course, this hand-built aspect means no two Vanquishes are quite the same, and all require painstaking examination to establish their condition. If you don’t feel up to the job, consider having an independent Aston Martin engineer such as Rikki Cann (rikkicann.com) inspect the car for you.
Both regular and S versions (the latter was launched in 2004) send their power to the rear wheels via a semi-automatic gearbox. It’s a reliable ’box, apart from gear position sensor issues on early cars, but nevertheless, quite a few owners had their cars converted to manuals, a job Aston Martin Works, among others, was happy to perform. As this was written, around half of the Vanquishes we found advertised had a manual ’box, so it’s popular – but we’d prefer a car with the standard automated manual gearbox.
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Back when Aston did beautiful cars!
This has to be my favourite car of all time. If it dropped today you would still say it was beautiful. Ok, the interior dash would need updating, but little else.
No car of this type is as flawless as a Japanese econobox. There are many reasons for this that actually makes sense, if you stop and think about it for a moment. One, Aston Martin is tiny, and its budget is tiny, so they simply could not undertake the level of testing that Toyota can - not in number of prototypes, test cars, or test miles. Not even close. Also, these cars were made by hand - for better and for worse - in tiny numbers. Hand-building has huge appeal, but it's not as perfect or consistent as robots are. That's a completely different scenario from perfect robots robotocally make perfectly-the-same-appliances-with-four-wheels. Of course the robot-made thing produced in the multi-millions will be more perfect.
About the gearbox, with the updates that came on the S (earlier cars can be updated), they work quite well for what they are - an early, single-clutch automated manual. I'm a committed true-manual fan, but the Vanquish was intended to have the paddle system, and the manual conversion has its own pros and cons.
I've had a Vanquish S for 6 years. It is, imo, one of the all-time great supercar GTs. I did spend money to sort it when I first got it, but since then it hass given me no trouble. Truly epic car.
If I was able to pay these prices for cars like this, I'd expect them to be faultless, to have been developed so hardly anything wore out quickly, if we can have turn key every day transport, why are cars with six , seven figure prices like that?