Aston Martin Rapide

The Aston Martin Rapide is a 5-door liftback from Aston Martin, built from 2010 to 2020, as electrification stopped being an experiment and the crossover took every market. Under the bonnet: 5.9 L AM11 V12. Marek Reichman drew it.

How it came about

The Aston Martin Rapide ( rə-PEED) is an executive saloon car that was produced by the British carmaker Aston Martin from 2010 until 2020. Aston Martin began development of the Rapide in 2005 as the company's first series produced four-door automobile. The initial design was completed in about seven weeks by Marek Reichman. After more than four months of development, a prototype was completed and displayed at the 2006 North American International Auto Show. The production version of the Rapide debuted at the 2009 International Motor Show Germany, and manufacture began in May 2010 at the Magna Steyr facility in Graz, Austria.

The "vertical/horizontal" (VH) platform, which the Rapide uses, extensively incorporates aluminium throughout the body, reducing weight. In 2012, Aston Martin ended its partnership with Magna Steyr and shifted production to Gaydon, a Warwickshire village where the other VH-platform cars—including the DB9, the DBS, the Vantage and the second-generation Vanquish—were produced. The car was praised by automotive critics for its appealing exterior and interior design. In 2015, Aston Martin debuted an electric concept version, the Rapide E. The production-ready model debuted in 2019 but was never series-produced.

The hardware

Power comes from 5.9 L AM11 V12; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. It weighs 1950 -. It shifts through a 6-speed ZF 6HP 26 (Touchtronic II) automatic (2010–2014) / 8-speed ZF 8HP70 (Touchtronic III) automatic (2014–2020) / Xtrac Bespoke P1289 ILEV automatic (Rapide E). The wheelbase is 117.7 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.

Family and rivals

Its family tree is legible: assembly was at Graz. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Jeep Grand Cherokee, the Lexus LFA, the Nissan Leaf — show what else the money bought that year. Its Aston Martin stablemates include the Aston Martin Mark II and the Aston Martin V12 Vantage GT3.