First look at Aston Martin V12 Vantage RS

When you strip away the layers of bureaucracy from a small company, the planning falls into the hands of real enthusiasts. You get a kind of corporate culture that asks, "What if...?" As in, "What if we put our biggest engine into our smallest car?" - reports Edmunds.com

The result is a car like the Aston Martin V12 Vantage RS, a concept with a 600-horsepower V12 engine that can reach 200 mph. If it goes into production (as we think it will), the Vantage RS would be the fastest street-legal Aston Martin you can buy.



One suspects this particular "What if?" question would have remained unanswered were Aston Martin still a part of the vast Ford empire. Liberated from Ford just a year ago, the team at Aston Martin's headquarters in Gaydon, just southeast of Birmingham in the English Midlands, produced a fully functioning mule of this car just last fall and commenced testing. And on December 11 at a lavish party to celebrate the opening of Aston's impressive new design studio, this concept car was unveiled to an audience of 700.

In as little as 18 months, the Aston Martin V12 Vantage RS could be on sale.

Mako Blue
The Aston Martin Vantage RS was unveiled by Dr. Ulrich Bez, Aston Martin's CEO. "Over the past five years, we have established a reputation for presenting fully functional, feasible concept cars, and the V12 Vantage RS is no exception," he said. "With our dedicated production facilities, our own engine plant, our own unique vehicle architecture and now a dedicated design studio, we have the ideal framework to bring new models such as this to market and to further establish Aston Martin as the ultimate independent luxury sports car company."

Bez invited the public to provide a name for the unique pearlescent blue in which the Aston Martin V12 Vanquish RS concept had been painted, and "Mako Blue" subsequently won the contest. Marek Reichman, Aston's design director says, "The name is taken from the mako shark, which is the fastest and most agile shark known to man. The Maori translation for mako is 'blue lightning,' which obviously is descriptive of both color and car."

Looking under the hood of the beautifully finished concept car, it's amazing that Aston Martin's V12 fits at all. The task of assessing the feasibility of squeezing it into the Vantage was originally contracted out to an independent engineering consultancy, which concluded that it couldn't be done. So Aston brought it back in house to prove that it could.

The car has been built by Aston Martin Operations, a team of six that also built the Rapide concept car, the N24 racer and the Bond cars. "You could say that they're our Q division," says Ian Minards, director of product planning, reinforcing the whole James Bond thing. It wasn't the width of the engine bay that was an issue but instead the height. When you look at the RS concept in profile, you can see that the hood is raised slightly to clear the leading edge of the V12. Minards also says that once the RS reaches production, it will have a modified front subframe and an altered engine oil pan to further improve the fit.

Dreaded Weight Gain?
The weight penalty for swapping the Vantage's 4.3-liter V8 for the 6.0-liter V12 is some 176 pounds, and it tips the Vantage's weight distribution from 48 percent front/52 percent rear to 52 percent front/48 percent rear.

Yet thanks to a number of weight-saving measures, the V12 Vantage actually weighs less than the stock Vantage. The use of a carbon-fiber hood reduces weight by 11 pounds, while the carbon-fiber construction of the Recaro seats reduces weight by 44 pounds. The use of forged wheels and carbon-ceramic brake rotors further reduces weight. Aston Martin claims that the V12 Vantage RS weighs less than 3,537 pounds compared to the 3,594 pounds of the V8 Vantage.

This particular 6.0-liter V12 has been borrowed from an Aston Martin DBRS9, a tamer version of the car that Aston races at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and it delivers 600 horsepower. Just like a racing engine, it features dry-sump lubrication, tuned exhaust manifolds, forged pistons, steel connecting rods and special cylinder heads with unique cam timing. It's rated at 600 hp at 6,250 rpm and 509 pound-feet of torque at 5,000 rpm. With this kind of motivation, the RS is expected to reach 60 mph in 4.0 seconds and then get to 100 mph in just 8.5 seconds.

"The first car built as a test mule would get over 200 mph," Minards says. As a result, Aston has tried hard to reduce Vantage's aerodynamic lift by 50 percent, only without altering the car's fundamental shape. That's why you see the carbon-fiber aero splitter in the front, and there's also a small rear wing that sits flush with the trunk lid and then deploys into the air stream as vehicle speed increases.

For all this, the Vantage RS signals a clear intention to stay on the ground, as its 19-inch wheels — machined from billet aluminum at great expense — are wrapped in Pirelli P Zero tires, 255/35R19s on 9.0-inch rims in front and 295/30R19s on 11.0-inch rims in the rear.

The V12 Soundtrack
At the RS's unveiling, a recording played of the V12 whooping angrily to a few prods of the throttle, giving us an idea of the fabulous free-revving yowl that the 5,935cc 48-valve DOHC V12 can produce when it's in race specification. Unfortunately a line to the engine's dry-sump oiling system had been incorrectly connected during final preparation, so there would be no live concert during the evening.

The chassis will be a relatively straightforward setup without the fancy electronic controls of the recently introduced Aston Martin DBS. This car's dampers are manually adjustable. (You can see blue adjusters atop the inner fenders once you lift the hood.) Although other carmakers are developing ever more sophisticated stability control, the V12 Vantage RS's system will have just two modes, either on or off, backed up by a limited-slip differential. And while both the mule and concept car have the V8's Graziano-built six-speed manual gearbox, Aston hasn't ruled out the Speedshift transaxle with shift paddles on the steering wheel.

There are a number of major technical challenges facing Aston's engineers, though, says Minards. As well as the air emissions compliance, engine cooling and oil sump (a wet sump system hasn't been ruled out), there's also the less obvious challenge of government-certified crash performance. The Vantage's design is configured around the shorter V8, and its performance against the barrier in a frontal impact will be altered by the longer V12 engine.

Speed With Style
The "RS" badging for this car is rather incongruous, because these letters bring to mind Porsche and its single-minded approach to specialty models like this one. In contrast, the Vantage RS gives off mixed messages. There are racing-style Recaro seats with high-tech four-point Schroth seatbelt harnesses, plus lots of carbon-fiber trim, yet there's a full complement of luxury equipment plus light gray suede upholstery.

Minards says, "Without mentioning the P-word, yes, if we'd painted the concept car Kermit Green or Jaffa Orange and given it a stripped-out black interior, then the message would have been very clear. But I'm not sure that's what the Aston Martin customer wants. This is our RS, which means craftsmanship and elegance. To use a James Bond analogy, even when he's in a dinner jacket, you know there's aggression lurking."

That said, Minards also notes, "At this stage the car could develop in two ways, either going real hard-core racy or more luxurious." Customer feedback might simply determine the outcome, as there's been such a high level of interest in this car that Aston could build the V12 Vantage it wants with no fear of them sticking to showroom floors, even at a premium price.

Speaking of price, about $320,000 — double the price of a Vantage V8 — seems likely, which would put it up with the Ferrari 430 Scuderia and Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera. According to Minards, production could be as few as just a hundred, and indeed all the top sports car companies are having great success with such limited-production specialty models.

Assuming all of these hurdles are overcome, the earliest the Aston Martin V12 Vantage RS could be on sale is mid-2009. For anyone lucky enough to get their name on the waiting list, that's going to be an agonizingly long wait.

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