2005 Aston Martin V12 Vanquish Test Drive

Vanquishing the Competition

Is this the best sports car ever built? No, it's better than that.

Want to know what makes the best and fastest Aston Martin such a complete wonder of a car?

Soul. Beauty. Timelessness.

Sure, all the technology -- what all those earnest car magazines will tirelessly enumerate in microscopic detail -- has everything to do with how a carmaker gets to "soul," and we'll even tell you about many of those attributes ourselves.

But come off it if you think anyone with $228K and two years to kill on a wait list for the Vanquish is buying the car because they're thinking even slightly about how many beer cans worth of aluminum are in the chassis or what density rubber was used to dampen the shock mounts.

You're right to think the results of all that techno-brilliance are glory right here on earth. But it is the sum of those parts, not the details, that is of utmost importance to the Aston buyer.

HIGHS: Extraordinary marriage of power, poise, handling and beauty. LOWS: Most of us can't afford one.

And you might think that we're full of it -- that we haven't got a clue what a man with $20 million in the bank and double that in assets cares about -- and you could be right. But we believe Aston Martin knows darn well, especially since they've already got hundreds of takers for the Vanquish, sight unseen. One picture of the Vanquish is enough to tell these people that this car is unique.

And why don't those lucky few just buy a Ferrari instead?

Because even with all of its engineering know-how and racing heritage, Ferrari simply couldn't make this car. It would be utterly out of character.

Aston Martins, like the British themselves, are unique. And the Vanquish is at once faster than nearly any car on the road -- 0 to100 mph in ten seconds flat, for example -- and at the same time so much more refined and relaxed to drive at city speeds than any Porsche 911, let alone a 360 Modena, that you can actually drive the Vanquish slowly and still enjoy it.

Also, at 110 miles per hour, cruising over the highways of the Scottish Borders region where we had a day to test the new Vanquish recently, we could easily carry on conversations that would be blown out by wind and engine noise in other exotics. In sum, such civilized manners make this is a gentleman's racer, automotive sculpture that can go like hell but doesn't have to in order to make its point.

And that point is nothing short of the apotheosis of more than a hundred years of motoring know-how rolled into one glorious automobile.