The Bond car for the carpool lane.
The bellow of 12-cylinders ricocheted off the walls of the dimly lit tunnel as the Aston Martin Rapide rocketed forward with incredible speed. Only a few hundred yards in length, the Battery Park Underpass connects nothing more exotic than the battle-scarred FDR Drive and West Side Highway in lower Manhattan. But this short stretch of tunnel became my new best friend during a weekend with the Aston sedan.
Genteel when you want it to be, the Rapide can be a pussycat when you don’t need every ounce of performance from its 470-bhp 5.9-liter V-12 engine and 6-speed automatic gearbox. On the highway, the Rapide devours miles with all the comfort and cool refinement you’d expect from a car costing more than $200,000. Of course, it also has a voracious appetite for fuel, as proven by its official 13-mpg city/19-mpg highway averages. In New York traffic, I routinely saw single digit economy readings.
There are also some sacrifices to be made when it comes to passenger comfort. Cars like the Porsche Panamera and Bentley Flying Spur have roomier rear seats and vastly superior ingress/egress. The Rapide, meanwhile, has “swan-wing” doors that open out and slightly upwards. They sound fancy and look cool, but I saw stars on one occasion as I clobbered my head while hopping out of the Aston. And forget rear visibility, the Rapide has none. This is the only car I’ve driven in which every single valet, without exception, asked me to park myself.
Thankfully, the Rapide is highly maneuverable and the steering has quick reflexes. That’s really what this car is all about. The Rapide has the look and feel of a sports car that just happens to have an extra pair of doors. To its credit, trunk space is actually pretty good (especially if you lower the rear seats). And with the windows rolled down, the Bang & Olufsen 15-speaker sound system rocked Times Square during one late-night cruise.
Yet nothing rivaled the sound of that English-built V-12, as it cleared its throat for one more subterranean blast around the tip of Manhattan.
Related posts:
- Video: 2011 Aston Martin Rapide
- 2011 Aston Martin Rapide – Driving Impressions
- Aston Martin CEO to Auction Rapide to Support Japan Relief Effort
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