On the list of the greatest James Bond cars of all time—and hence, the greatest movie cars, period—the Aston Martin V12 Vanquish easily ranks alongside the iconic Aston DB5 that debuted in 1964’s Goldfinger. Appearing in 2002’s Die Another Day, the 20th Bond film, the V12 Vanquish driven by Pierce Brosnan was an homage to the 007 DB5, equipped with adaptive camouflage, target-seeking shotguns, machine guns, missiles and a passenger ejector seat among other gadgets. The first Aston Martin to appear in the Bond series since the throwback DB5 in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), it kicked off the official partnership between Eon Productions and the famed British marque which continues to this day.
The glacial pace at which Eon is moving to name Daniel Craig‘s successor for the role of the superspy—it’s been three years and counting—is beginning to frustrate fans. Granted these are not easy Lobbs to fill. Whatever the outcome casting-wise, one thing is for certain however: the new 007’s chariot awaits. Because no matter who inherits the license to thrill, there can be no question that the brand-new version of the Vanquish “Super GT” is the perfect vehicle to convey Bond in the style to which he’s become accustomed.
It would not have come as a huge surprise—though in purist camps, certainly a disappointment—had Aston abandoned the V12 engine in favor of something more “progressive.” After all, even Ferrari ditched 12 cylinders for its eye-popping new F80, which sports a twin-turbo V6 mated to auxiliary electric motors. Choosing to keep the Vanquish a V12 however has in no way held the marque back; it boasts the highest top speed of any Aston series production car to date.
“It was inconceivable that a new Aston Martin flagship should be powered by anything other than a state-of-the-art V12,” declares Roberto Fedeli, Aston’s Chief Technical Officer. “One which delivers performance characteristics unmatched by any other car in its category.”
The 5.2-liter twin-turbo is good for 824 horsepower and 738 lb-ft of torque, with a 0 to 62 mph sprint of 3.2 seconds and a top speed of 214 mph. Thanks to those numbers and a base price of $429,000, it squares off favorably against the likes of the Ferrari 12Cilindri, Bentley Continental GT Speed, Rolls-Royce Spectre, and not much else.
This is exalted territory, to be sure, and in fact, as Aston points out, the “white space” between the ultra-luxury and performance cars on that list is right where Aston belongs. With the new Vanquish dead center, capable of being both a razor-sharp speed machine and an opulent super-GT comfortably clocking 1,000-mile road trips to Bond-worthy destinations, and then leaving the bad guys in the dust.
Designed by Marek Reichmann, Aston’s über-talented Chief Creative Officer who celebrates 20 years with the company in 2025, having created some of its most iconic cars along the way, the sensational new vehicle builds on the original inspiration for the first V12 Vanquish introduced in 2001: the iconic Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato, one of the most beautiful sports cars of all time, produced from 1960-63.
Reichmann extols the Vanquish’s perfect proportions that, like the DB4 GT Zagato, will ensure it still looks beautiful in 50 years’ time. “It’s a very, very dynamic body language,” he notes. “It’s a language of surfaces that are moving even when they’re static. This car has a feeling, it has a liveness, it has a sinuousness. [You] see the power and that’s what Vanquish should be visually…. A shark, an unstoppable rogue.”
While Aston has long been known for breathtaking automotive architecture, bringing interiors up to speed with a combination of gorgeous materials and state-of-the-art infotainment has been a recent priority, reaching its pinnacle with Vanquish. The new Vanquish is also a fitting debut for Aston’s new Chief Executive Officer, Adrian Hallmark, who came on board in October 2024.
The hiring of Hallmark, former Chairman and CEO of Bentley Motors (who replaces Amedeo Felisa) shows that Aston’s billionaire Executive Chairman Lawrence Stroll is doubling down on his commitment to and investment in the marque. “In Adrian we are attracting one of the highest calibre leaders not just in our segment, but in the entire global automotive industry,” Stroll emphasizes. “Complementing our world-class leadership, Adrian will bring to Aston Martin unrivaled experience in both the ultra-luxury and British manufacturing sectors to progress our strategy and continue recent momentum.”
Having already launched the new DB12 and Vantage within the last year-and-a-half, as well as put its fledgling Formula One reboot firmly within the top five, one might have thought a pause was in order. Clearly Stroll is not the type to rest on his laurels however. The brand also recently opened a huge new ultra-luxe “Q New York” Aston Martin flagship store in NYC, while simultaneously making a major investment in its Gaydon, UK headquarters which now combines “cutting-edge technology with hand-craftsmanship and traditional techniques, providing an infrastructure ideally suited to innovation, creativity and advanced engineering.”
The focus on the new initiatives has been to enhance Q by Aston Martin, the marque’s Bond-inspired bespoke enhancement division, which while stopping short of installing actual machine guns can pretty much fulfill clients’ wildest wishes. For over 110 years, since it was first founded, “design is something that Aston Martin has always been really well known for,” Tom Clayton, Aston’s Head of Product Marketing, said at the Vanquish’s global launch at the famed Cala di Volpe hotel in Sardinia, where The Spy Who Loved Me was filmed in 1977.
In addition to Cala di Volpe’s 007 cred, it has played host to the likes of Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Onassis, Princess Diana and Dodi al Fayed, Elton John, Bill Gates, and Beyoncé and Jay-Z. The legend of Cala di Volpe began in 1962 when a group of Sardinian landowners including the Aga Khan formed the Consorzio Costa Smeralda in order to develop it as a world-class destination for the aristocracy and jet set. Obviously Aston could not have picked a better place to launch the Vanquish.
“We’ve always made achingly beautiful cars, even more so under the reign of Marek Reichmann within the last 20 years. Our customers and even the global marketplace will always talk with heartwarming joy about an Aston Martin, how much they love it,” Clayton enthuses. “Now we’ve also taken huge steps in the last few years”—since Stroll took over in 2020—”to really, really build up a luxury experience for our customers that transcends the product as well.”
And last but not least there is performance, which in today’s world, Clayton says, is more than just raw power, “it’s in driving dynamics and the technology within the car, and performance really is in how the car makes makes the customer feel when they drive it. So combining these three elements, our key brand pillars, is certainly how we are trying to change our brand and move our brand up into that white space” between ultra-luxury and performance.
“And we believe we are the intersection of all of these things. We believe we do this better than anybody…. Recently we’ve have a laser-sharp focus on these three points and it breeds across our whole company and our whole brand.”
Second only to Stroll, who of course drives every new Aston ahead of anyone else, the marque’s very best customers got to preview the new Vanquish before it was announced to the world at large. The focus, Clayton reveals, was on those “who love our V12 product. Maybe they’ve had some of the previous generation of Aston cars, maybe they’re a Valkyrie [hypercar] owner. We do have an NDA, but we trusted them to show them the car first.”
This lucky clique not only got to place orders for the new Vanquish—which Clayton calls “an unprecedented combination of technology, craftsmanship, and material application”—before anyone else, but were able to customize them in advance via the Q division as well. “From our pretty healthy Vanquish order book, we know that over 65% of those orders are bespoke,” Clayton says, “which means Q have gone and done their work, their magic, and given that those customers their ultimate cars.
And, “when they start to deliver to the first customers, we’ll see some beautiful specifications, and some really quirky stuff as well out there on the cars,” he adds. “What better way to bring it to market? What better way to show it for the first time [with] customers driving really special cars on the street?”
It will be a rare sight, as it should be. “We know that we’re going to build less than a thousand cars a year,” Clayton proclaims. “It’s going to be really, really limited, very special. You won’t ever see a bunch of Vanquishes in the same place. They are totally unique and they will always be unique.”
