Revisiting our drives in Aston Martin’s Vanquish – car pictures of the week
The Vanquish is 25 and we’re in a reflective mood. So let’s look through some of our dalliances with Gaydon’s venerable flagship
The Aston Martin Vanquish is 25 years old, so we thought we’d gather together a bunch of images from our encounters with the model, from across its three generations, over the years. From group tests with Ferraris and Lamborghinis, to family infighting with the DB9 and DB11, to match-ups of the generations (first and second), we’ve spent plenty of time behind the wheel of Gaydon’s venerable big dog.
The Vanquish rang in an ambitious new era for Aston Martin, featuring an advanced Lotus-style aluminium construction (that Hethel helped extensively in the development of) and composite bodywork. The lusty Cosworth-derived V12 had featured before in the DB7 Vantage, but was more powerful here and was paired with an (at the time) innovative automated manual transmission.
The flaws of the mk1 Vanquish are well-known. It was full of Ford switchgear, the gearbox was legendarily terrible and the overall package just wasn’t quite the objective answer to Ferrari’s 550 Maranello that some had hoped for. But god, did it have the lust factor. Here was an Aston flagship that just oozed style and charisma, in its design, its dynamics and its powertrain personality. It had that mythical quality that’s essential to all the best halo models, something later generations carried forward.
It’s something that always stood it in good stead whenever being compared with lesser Aston Martins. Objectively, the DB9 was better in many ways than the original Vanquish, yet the big boss's appeal could not be invalidated. Likewise the second-generation Vanquish with the DB11 and the third-generation car with the current DB12 S. Sensible money (and less money) buys the junior model. But the heart yearns for the V12 flagship.
Vanquish hasn’t been a permanent fixture these past 25 years, with DBS models taking turns in between generations to serve as Aston’s flagship. They were great cars, but that didn’t stop everyone getting inexplicably excited when it came time for the Vanquish name to make a return. The second-generation car brought even more power, a much better gearbox, a One-77-inspired interior and design and even more carbon bodywork. It still wasn’t a patch on the equivalent Ferrari – the F12 – and yet still we adored it.
The third-generation twin-turbo car serves as Aston’s current flagship GT but for the first time, it’s not the top Aston in the lineup, even with a Ferrari 12 Cilindri-beating 824bhp V12. It sits under the new Valhalla hypercar, yet its allure has never been stronger, as the only remaining V12 in Aston’s lineup.
