No longer do you change gear with a polished cricket bat handle, the Vanquish features finger tip controlled Formula One style paddles which shift you through the gearbox in a quarter of a second. Out goes the throttle connected by a steel hawser, in comes an electronic drive by wire system. Checking the tyre pressures will never again require one to crease one's slacks as individual tyre pressures and temperatures are monitored through an automatic electronic sensing system. Where the old cars featured oak trees and tonnes of steel, the new cars features carbon fibre, extruded aluminium and composite materials bonded together to form a central monocoque safety cell. There are additional deformable composite structure energy absorbent zones front and rear.
Safety standards are very high.
With only three hundred cars a year scheduled for production, personalisation is still very much a part of the build process. The bodies are still hand finished to ensure the aluminium panels fit perfectly, whilst equipment levels will be individually specified. It's a very impressively engineered car, accelerating Aston Martin to a position it could never have dreamed of when independent. Sadly with a few notable exceptions it's the only way for small car companies to survive these days. However, given the exceptional cars that can result, perhaps we shouldn't spend too long looking at the past.