Aston Martin Rapide - James Bond's family car.

>        Aston Martin Rapide - James Bond's family car.

Muntaser Mirkar      11 May 2009

We take a closer look at Aston Martin's contender for the fast four-door family car – the awesome new Rapide.

We wanted to make the most beautiful four-door sports car in the world - that may be a one-line design brief that the top honchos at Porsche, Lamborghini, Ferrari and probably a couple other sports car manufacturers gave themselves a few years back. But guess who's come down to beating everyone else in the beauty pageant - yes, it's Aston Martin. When the first concepts for the Rapide were shown off to the world in 2006, we knew the British manufacturer was on to something.

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Porsche tried with the Panamera and Lamborghini complimented with the Estoque - but while the German looked like the expecting mother of a 911, the Italians managed to dish out a meaner raging bull. Where the Rapide will outclass both of those is with pure elegance. The fact that the Aston Martin design philosophy over the years hugely compliments a larger four-door body quite well just made things even easier - or so it may seem.

One look at the Rapide and you wouldn't mistake it for anything but an Aston Martin. With design cues that hark back to their extremely successful sports coupes from the recent past, the Rapide is all what the design brief said it should be. All the way from the front end through the flowing profile and the typical rear, the Rapide is one-hundred-percent Aston Martin. Executed with no aesthetic compromises the Rapide uses 'san-wing' doors that rise upwards and outwards to gain access to the rear seats. But what makes this so true to their design tradition is the way the rear shoulders blend into the kicked up tail to create that legendary Aston stance. And then there's that iconic side strake that starts as intakes behind the front wheel arches, flows through the front door and blends into the bodywork as it passes the leading shutline of the rear door - a detail to die for!

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