Aston Martin Rapide
IT'S a sunny Sunday afternoon and you're off to a country pub for a pie and several pints. Naturally you will not drive yourself there and so are cadging a lift. You have two offers: a Ford Galaxy with lots of space for head and legs or the cramped rear seat of a brand new Aston Martin Rapide.
Which do you choose? Only a complete loser would choose the Ford because the pub will be packed and loads of people will see you rock up in one of the world's most sexy four-door cars. You might well fall out of the Rapide in a tangle of arms and legs but you will still have arrived in great style. Anyway, people will simply assume that this isn't the first pub that you've been to today and that you have already got a few jars in the bag.
You can probably guess the identity of the Rapide's mother from looking at it. Yes, it's a stretched Aston Martin DB9. Astons have an extruded aluminium chassis made up of bonded, riveted and bolted together sections so it's extremely straightforward to get a few longer lengths of aluminium and make a longer version of the car. Which is exactly what's been done - in Graz, Austria and not in Aston's Gaydon factory where everything else is made. A bit of a shame this, because I would rather it were built by British workers. Never mind, it's still lovely to look at.
