The Vanquish is Aston-Martin's senior sports car, and with the lighter DB9 offering similar performance in a like-sized package, we've sometimes wondered why it's still around. That question has been answered with the S model, which is now the only Vanquish offered here. The S extracts 520 horsepower -- an increase of 60 -- from the 6.0-litre V12, while chassis upgrades include 378-mm (15-inch!) front brake rotors with six-piston calipers. Located in the tail, the automatically-shifted manual transmission can do its own thing in Drive, or be "manually" shifted with wheel-mounted buttons. Claimed performance numbers include 0-100 km/h in 4.8 seconds, 0-160 (100 mph) in fewer than 10, and a 321-km/h top whack.

Power, beauty and exclusivity

So exclusive, we still haven't driven one