At this year's Detroit auto show, Aston Martin stunned the gathered crowd with a breathtakingly beautiful four-door styling exercise called the Rapide. Named for the legendary late-1930s Lagonda flagship engineered by W. O. Bentley, the Rapide is the second four-door Aston project initiated under Ford ownership. The first, the 1993 Lagonda Vignale show car, was designed by Ghia and later mothballed. The Rapide, however, is all set for production in 2008, just ahead of its direct rival, the Porsche Panamera. We drove the concept car in Gaydon, England.
"Our goal was to make the most beautiful four-door car in the world," says design director Marek Reichman. The team succeeded from an aesthetic point of view, but the rear-seat packaging is unacceptable. Although the wheelbase was stretched from the DB9’s 107.9 inches to 117.7 inches, which matches that of the standard Lincoln Town Car, tall passengers will find it very difficult to squeeze through the narrow aperture defined by the low roofline and the restricted door opening. "The rear doors will swing open much farther in the production car," promises Reichman. "Slimmer seats will provide more legroom, and we may even alter the platform to lower the hip point, but that would require a $3 million investment." We say it would be worth it. The rear seats are beautifully sculpted, and we’d like to be able to sit in them.
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