Claustrophobics might want to sit this one out since, while it is a four-door, today’s Nice Price or No Dice Aston Martin offers tight quarters and high sills befitting its sports-touring nature. Let’s see if its price has any Chrometophobia sufferers feeling equally icky.
Let’s be honest here: tribute cars are kind of weird. I suppose that’s less the case if the person to whom the car pays tribute has passed on. That at least avoids the awkwardness of accidentally meeting them in person whilst in a mobile shrine to their visage.
That was the case with the 2004 Chevy Monte Carlo SS we looked at yesterday. It was festooned with the “Intimidator” package, a trim level that emulated the looks of the late, great NASCAR driver, Dale Earnhardt’s race car. It wasn’t overly embarrassing, but at $17,900, it was pretty-dang pricey. Despite its low mileage and as-new appearance, many of you advocated that it seemed closer to $10K in value, an opinion that was reflected in the 70% No Dice loss the Intimidator ended the day with.
Not a Lagonda
The 2011 Aston Martin Rapide we’re looking at today isn’t promoting any racer or other aspirational individual. Sold between 2010 and 2020, the model, however, does have the distinction of being the first four-door saloon ever offered under the Aston Martin name.
That’s not to say that the small, Warwickshire-based carmaker doesn’t have a history of making four-door cars. All the previous ones, though, have been under the marque’s Lagonda brand, a nameplate the company acquired shortly after World War II. That was at the start of Aston’s golden era under the guidance of David Brown, which also led to the series of historic “DB”-branded street cars and racers.
The Rapide name was, in fact, taken from Lagonda. It had been used on a series of models prior to Aston Martin ownership, and again on a four-door saloon introduced in 1961, which was based on the Aston Martin DB4. The Aston Martin Rapide’s immediate ancestor is the legendary William Towns-designed Lagonda of the 1970s and ’80s. The company did offer another Lagonda around the same time as this Rapide, the Taraf, a short-run model sold exclusively in the Middle Eastern market.
The Fisker connection
The Rapide was sold everywhere, including the U.S., albeit in small numbers. In total, about 2,900 were built before the model was succeeded by the upgraded Rapide S. Interestingly, there’s a connection between this car and the Fisker Ocean that belly-flopped in the market last year. Both the Ocean and the Rapide were built in the same Austrian factory by the consignment car builder, Magna Steyr, and the Rapide shares its basic architecture with the Aston Martin DB9, which, like the Ocean, was partially designed by Henrik Fisker. That, thankfully, is where the similarities end.
That architecture has been dubbed the VH (Vertical-Horizontal) platform by Aston Martin, and its clever design underpinned pretty much every Aston model (and the Lagonda Taraf) of the first 20 years of the new millennium. The all-alloy design locks down the expensive hard points—firewall, door pillars, etc.—but allows for everything else to be flexible in positioning. Not only was it a cheaper way to develop new models, but it made for a much faster build during each car’s construction.
Friends at Ford
The motivation for the Rapide is the 470-horsepower 5.9-liter V12 engine, which famously originated from two Ford Duratec V6s welded together. That was made possible by Ford’s ownership of Aston Martin in the 1990s when the big mill was developed. Backing that up is a ZF-sourced six-speed automatic with push-button and paddle controls.
There are a number of other Ford or Ford-adjacent parts in the Rapide, including air vents and a nav unit from Volvo, and some other bits shared with Jaguars. Ford owned both those companies at the same time, allowing for broad parts bin raiding.
Those bits all look pretty fantastic on this 39,400-mile car. Painted in elegant gray over a tan and black full-leather interior, the car appears flawless. The seller claims it to have been “well-loved,” including having been kept in a “climate-controlled garage.” We should all have it so nice.
We should also note, however, that the Rapide’s slinky-negligee styling does suffer the trade-off of a cramped cabin. The rear buckets are especially tight on these. On the plus side, this car wears new Michelin meats on its 20-inch alloys, is claimed to have been properly maintained by an Aston Martin technician, and to have a clean CarFax report.
A beautiful bargain?
It’s safe to say that the English know how to do stately elegance well. Whether a Savile Row suit, a royal soirée, or a luxury automobile, the Brits are almost always bang on. This Rapide appears to be no exception. The question, of course, is whether this particular one is worth its $45,500 asking. That price, it should be noted, is a good bit less than a quarter of the $200,000 this car cost when new. And it’s tariff-free too! You’ve got to love depreciation.
What’s your take on this elegant Aston Martin and that $45,500 asking? Does that seem like a deal to slip into a tight suit of a car? Or is that too much for the headache an out-of-warranty Aston might cause?
You decide!
Nice Price or No Dice:
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H/T to FauxShizzle for the hookup!
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