Affordable Dream Car: Why The Aston Martin Rapide S is AutoTrader's Biggest Temptation

foreign [Music] hello everybody today I am finally getting my hands on what must be one of the most tempting second-hand Bargains to ever haunt the British car classifieds the Aston Martin rapid thanks to our good friend depreciation this formerly 165 000 pounds 190 mile an hour six liter V12 leather-lined Super Saloon with one of the best and most desirable badges in the world can be yours for the price of a second-hand Golf GTI and I know you're already tempted because I'm already tempted but before today I've never had the chance to get my hands on arapid to see whether it might be a car good enough that I'd actually want to buy one so should I should you is it worth it let's find out thank you [Music] trying to piece together a timeline for the evolution of the rapid has been somewhat difficult owing to the fact that all of the many sources I've used have got almost exclusively conflicting dates for when the car received its various upgrades in any case the rapid landed way back in 2010 as Aston Martin's first serious attempt at a four-seater four-door car since the Lagonda of the well 1970s 80s and sort of 90s you could I suppose say that the old Aston Martin V8 was also a proper four-seater being more generous in terms of rear capacity than any of their later output the db7 DB9 Vanquish Vanquish DBS and the like but even from its very Inception the concept behind the rapid was one the split opinion and continues to do so today it is in essence a stretched DB9 and to some that's absolutely brilliant it is there therefore the perfect car and to others it's just about the daftest idea you could have ever possibly had I'll admit that for a very long time I've been in the latter Camp though it's not exactly an ugly thing by making it essentially a foot 250 millimeters to be precise longer than a DB9 it has lost a little bit of the Elegance of that car's looks now granted the early DB9 itself has begun to age a little bit but you only need look at the DBS to see how inherently right the shape is and the short of the advantage was I think one of the best looking cars of well ever this though to give it credit is still far from ugly certainly compared to the Porsche Panamera and I've no doubt there are many watching this who remember with the great fondness the Top Gear four-door supercars episode where they compared a rapid with the Panamera and the Maserati Quattroporte sport GTS I actually owned an example of a Quattroporte GTS I have laterally driven a Panamera turbo and today finally I'm getting to complete the trilogy though I'm sure there will always be plenty of people who'll compare this car with the likes of an Audi RS6 maybe even an sa to Mercedes S65 E63 BMW five sevens and everything else the fact is this was never a car designed to directly compete with the likes of those it is really its own thing and I think the choice of the Panamera and the Maserati as competition was pretty rare even in such rarified company the Aston Martin has I think the most desirable badge and the sexiest engine if on paper and nothing else in early guys who put out 470 horsepower 443 pound foot that's 600 newton meters and had a top speed of 188 mile an hour so hardly shy or underwhelming particularly compared with the German Rivals who were generally picked at 155. Panamera notwithstanding but counting against the rapid was the fact that in order to preserve this beautiful side profile the rear space has been somewhat compromised and that really to many was a bit of a darf choice because the whole point of this car was the rear seats and in many ways they're the worst bit of it not only is space in the bag limited particularly in terms of leg room if you're over six foot you may struggle it's actually the door which is the biggest issue it doesn't open all that wide an Aston Martin tradition it sort of butterflies up at that 15 degree angle and uh it's not particularly big nor is the line of the car very tall or the bottom of it very low so so it feels like you kind of feed yourself in through a porthole very very inelegant I can't imagine many people who'd have ever paid to be in the back of one of these compared with just about any luxury car from a Mercedes S-Class to a Lexus LS the rear really is a bit of a joke the shapes are lovely the quality of leather is impeccable and the boot is an okay size in the very early days Aston Martin tried to Market this as a proper four-seater four-door family car but allegedly dealers found many customers somewhat unimpressed with that description so they changed tactic and instead started calling it a proper four-seater sports car and when they did that the car started to make a lot of sense and it may have also helped based on the feedback of their dealers who remember at this point in time were still reeling from the effects of the global financial crisis that Aston Martin dramatically reduced the price though I don't think they ever did so publicly allegedly discounts of some thirty thousand pounds weren't we had and I've heard similar stories relating to the DBS [Music] and just to show how much Aston Martin have misread the market for this car they didn't actually even build the very first ones themselves instead they gave the contract to Magna stire over in Gratz Austria a very well-known company who over the years have built many cars quite successfully they anticipated they were going to sell some 2 000 of these a year and though I didn't find exact numbers apparently they struggled to make a quarter of that so in 2011 Magnus Tire stopped building them and production was brought back over to gaydum then somewhere in 2012 2013 this is where my sources start to argue with one another the car morphed from the rapid into the rapid s that brought with it the usual cosmetic changes mostly a bigger Grill at the front different wheel options etc etc but more importantly a boost in power for the engine from 470 horses up to 550. this dropped to the north to 62 time from 5.2 seconds down to 4.9 and brought the top speed from 188 right up to a nice round 190 mile an hour the Adaptive suspension was also revised given a new setting for track joining normal and Sport and various other changes were made throughout the car overall it is perceived to be a vastly better product then in around 2014-15 the car got an 8-speed version of the ZF automatic to replace the six that raised the top speed to a nice healthy 203 mile an hour dropped the naught to 62 by about half a second and even improved the fuel economy around the same time the car also got a new Bosch ECU raising Power by just a few horses and talk by about the same amount here the car produces 457 pound foot that's 620 new to meters and in the later cars it was 630 so about uh I don't know 460 something pound foot at this time the castle received some minor changes to the suspension the chassis and the braking system then in 2018 the last major to change for the rapid was introduced with the AMR model sporting a 600 horsepower version of this engine and an even sportier setup for the chassis foreign driving today is an early example of the rapid s a 2013 in this glorious shade called Volcano red as this bit of the road does appear to be quite a bit drier than the other and I'm sure you're wondering about my continuity today I'm now going to put it over into manual mode engage sport for the engine and gearbox but not the chassis open up the valves for the exhaust and see just whether this car is really as good to drive as anything with an Aston Martin badge on it should be [Music] [Music] I have to say it's really not the car that I was expecting because I have genuinely thought about buying one of these over the years I've actually broken one of my golden rules and read quite a few reviews of them and said reviews would tell you that the steering the handling and everything is really good but the suspension is a little bit too firm and in the early cars they just don't have that much power but though I wouldn't ever really call this thing slow at no point does it really feel like a 190 mile an hour sub five second to 60 car it's brisk not fast maybe I'm being a little bit too harsh on it in any case it does make a great noise and that of course is just as important as speed when it comes to an Aston Martin however perhaps the biggest disappointment for me is the steering In fairness I am on some freshly installed summer Tires Pirelli P Zeros which aren't anybody's favorite and it has rained quite a bit today so grip is simply not going to be as good as it could however just doesn't have that texture that feel of a DB9 and certainly at the advantage and the like this is not to say that it's bad the speed of the steering is very nice it's quite calm certainly compared to anything Italian of the period and you can make very very good progress the suspension also is a surprise but actually a pleasant one though at lower speeds and over certain imperfections in the road you can feel that it is a little bit on the firm side I don't think it's actually that bad in fact when the tarmac does smooth out a little and this section is particularly bad it's a little bit soft and wallowy not in a bad way but in a way that I just wasn't expecting based on what I'd read it rides like I think a nice big quick saloon car should now it does have different modes and in the interest of science I'm going to try one of those so I'll put the Adaptive dampers into Sport and I'm gonna do the same for the engine in reality this doesn't really change all that much but you know let's see all right foreign just to put some perhaps more useful context on the speed of this thing I'm in third gear 40 miles now everything's in sport I'm a man I'm gonna put my foot down that's 45 there's 50 and then 60. so like I said not slow but if you compare it to just about anything modern and turbocharged not especially quick either Drive goes in case you're wondering exclusively to the rear wheel so I am taking it a little bit easy in some of the sections here that I know are a touch greasy but honestly grip feels absolutely fine truthfully the dampers being in sport I just had to check because it doesn't actually feel massively different you hold the button and it will go into track and yes you can feel track instantly that has changed quite a bit on better sections around I could actually probably see you using the track dampers but on the worst ones you don't want to in terms of the driving position The View out and all that sort of stuff it is almost exactly DB9 it's eerily so you can actually get yourself sat nice and low in this I've got plenty of room for just about everything slightly disappointed that the steering column adjustment is still manual given the amount of gadgets and gizmos and things in a car like this and the price that Aston Martin were charging I would have thought that uh that would have been electric but hey ho certainly it's something to sit in I think it feels far more special more exciting and more interesting than either the Quattroporte or the Panamera so I wouldn't say that I was in love with it there is one thing you do need to know about this car which is that today you could pick up an example of an early six-speed rapid s for just over 40 thousand pounds or to put it another way the same price as the new Golf GTI that I reviewed a couple of years ago this is a lot of car for the money if that's still a little bit too much for you there are a few examples of the early rapid out there at less than 30 000 pounds of course it is easy to spend quite a bit more and if you want the AMR that is still going to be fairly strong money but honestly I'm not convinced that's really going to be more car for someone that wants to buy something like this to me it's a GT car making it harder stiffer faster just isn't the way that it should be done [Music] and you kinda knew this was coming didn't you before you go rushing off towards the classifieds there are a few things that it's only responsible for me to tell you when I was doing my research for this car everything I read said you know what the best thing about the rapid it's actually really reliable really decent that engine is strong the gearboxes are good barring a few minor issues with the early eight speed that was sorted in a recall they are decent strong cars it feels very well made it's a lovely place to spend some time in all the infotainment here is essentially the same as an advantage DB9 whatever of the era so it's decent not brilliant this has the pop-up Tweeter bno stereo which is fantastic and as a car to cover big miles in I love it but I've been trying to review John's Rapid for about two years now in that time many others have offered me theirs and I've said no no don't worry I've got one that I can go and drive up in Scotland well his first rapid you see he had for 14 months in which time I visited Scotland about three or four times and for none of those was it available because of the 40 months that he owned the car he only had it but four that was returned the problems with that car were actually never fully identified but were always electrical in nature it seemed almost impossible to cover more than about 150 miles without a check engine light or something else happening this car has been a far more successful experience in terms of the mechanical side of things it has been thus far fault free unfortunately it did require a replacement of both the front and back glass and the company who did it didn't do the job quite perfectly so it does need a bit of rectification work on account of a little bit of water Ingress there is also a few other cosmetic items that need tending to but other than that it seems thus far to be a much better car others that I've spoken to over the years seem to have a very similar experience either they buy the car have it for years and never have a single issue or they barely see it with the problems nearly always being electrical in nature and once again that's an area where the rapid isn't really any different to a DB9 DBS or a Vanquish of the same time fuel consumption also deserves a special mention as if you thought a two ton 6 liter naturally aspirated V12 Aston Martin was going to be frugal but be warned in the time John has had this and he has been enjoying it the best he's seen is about 20 or 21. just about all reports I've read say that around town or when having fun single digits are not exactly unusual and as an average if you're expecting anything in the 20s you're going to have to work for it the later 8-speed box cars do have a little bit of an advantage here but it appears to be chiefly on the motorway where the extra pair of Gears allows them to run the engine a little bit slower servicing and the like is as you would expect with a V12 Aston Martin of the day so uh don't expect much change out of a thousand pounds I would certainly say that if you are thinking of buying one of these an Aston Martin dealer is probably the place to get it or reputable specialist because even if you do have issues they will hopefully sort them out I was thinking I was going to get in this car and come out going either oh it's horrible it's awful I hate it or I have to have one and truth be told this is one of the rare occasions where it's kind of in the middle I really like it it's an absolute pleasure to drive if I could carry on for another hour or two I absolutely would but I've had my fun putting my foot down and I've no interest or need really to do it anymore it's done its job and done its job well and I respect it greatly but I also don't lust for it however I would forgive anybody who did so on that basis I suppose the rapid s has done its job and for under 50 000 pounds I really struggle to think of anything this special that you could get the next competitor really for me would be a Ferrari FF and that may be twice the car in some ways but it is twice the price will cost twice as much to keep going and is almost certainly likely to be twice as much hassle I love those dearly but um you've got to be dedicated to have an FF I'm sure there'll be some that say the same about the rapid but there we have it that is the Aston Martin rapid s a huge thanks to John for bringing it out and as ever to you for watching don't forget to hit the like button comment down below and subscribe if you haven't already I'll see you for the next one bye-bye [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: JayEmm on Cars

Views: 281,284

Keywords: Diary, VLOG, Car, Sound, Test, video, Review, Comparison, JayEmm on Cars

Id: J2a6BCjocW8

Length: 19min 39sec (1179 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 06 2023