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Aston Martin touts its new Rapide as “the world’s most elegant four-door sports car.” In spite of the fact that traditionally, by strict definition, the descriptions “four-door” and “sports car” are contradictions in terms to the sports car purist, the Rapide really does seem to live up to its lofty billing, and along with cars like Porsche’s equally new Panamera, seems to have knocked out yet another new niche in the luxury/performance car landscape.



If nothing else, the Rapide is most definitely two things: It is without doubt a true Aston Martin, with all the cache that entails, and it is a true four-seater, which can’t always be said of a bona fide sports car that claims to accommodate four adults. (Lotus Evora, anyone?) Even so, the back seats in the Rapide—which, like the fronts, are sculpted sport buckets designed to cradle their occupants in a most intimate way—really aren’t suited to anyone taller than six feet. For one, the thigh supports seem to be somewhat abbreviated compared to the fronts, which could prove uncomfortable for a long-legged individual over long periods of time. Second, the car’s necessarily low roofline—essential for giving it a signature coupe profile—will have taller passengers scraping their heads on the headliner. Then again, people shorter than 72 inches may have no issue with these accommodations at all.



If you have problems with the back seats, though, you likely won’t with the fronts. The forward buckets are as comfortable and supportive as they come, and that support is handy if you have a mind to drive the Rapide like the sports car Aston Martin says it is. Seating position, particularly from the driver’s perspective, is excellent, with the high shoulder line on the one side and a tall center console on the other creating a true fighter cockpit feel—essential for any sports car worth its salt. That feel extends into the back as well, the long console extending between the rear buckets and housing the rear comfort controls (as well as being a design necessity to house the rear-mid-mount transmission). Driver controls are well-placed, with an adjustable, ergonomically molded steering wheel and well-placed pedals. With the brake and accelerator actuators placed so well in relation to each other, it almost makes you wish for a manual transmission to practice your heel-toe shifting. You won’t have to worry about that, however, as the Rapide has no such setup. It’s equipped instead with a standard Touchtronic 2 automatic transmission. This is not a sequential or true automated manual gearbox as you’d find in the company’s smaller Vantage models, but a true automatic that offers seamless, well, automatic operation. Flipping the steering column-mounted shift paddles can put you in a fairly sporting semi-manual mode, and while gear actuation is perhaps not as crisp as with a true manual, shifting this way really helps bring out the car’s latent sporting tendencies. Particularly so when your gearchanges become ever more urgent with the car’s Sport mode engaged.



So what makes this car a true Aston Martin, in spite of having four seats and four doors? First is its design, incorporating possibly the most convincing “family DNA” design traits in the automotive kingdom. No matter which model you look at, you’re not likely to mistake an Aston Martin for any other car on the road. The wide metallic grille, the high shoulder line and low-slung roofline, the subtle, upswept trunk lip, and overall wedge-like shape make the Rapide look like nothing so much as a long-wheelbase DB-series car.



Second is the car’s power unit, the same 6.0-liter V12 developed in the DB9 and DBS Coupe and Volante models. As in the DB9, in the Rapide this engine develops 470 hp at 6000 rpm and 443 lb-ft of torque at 5000 rpm, which push the car to 62 mph (100 kph) in a claimed five seconds even, just two tenths of a second slower than the DB9 Coupe. Still impressive when you consider the extra mass the Rapide must carry around (some 500 pounds more than its two-door siblings).



As you might guess, the Rapide is by no means cheap, starting at $199,950 (including $2,100 gas guzzler tax). But the price includes a whole slew of standard equipment, including a 6-CD autochanger and MP3 connectivity, Bluetooth (with a nifty little mic above the driver's head), satellite radio, heated front and rear seats, powerfold mirrors, an auto-dimming mirror with integrated garage door opener, HDD satellite navigation, and, critically, a 13-speaker Bang & Olufsen sound system. This system employs what B&O terms ICEpower technology, which provides “a combination of high power and hi-fi sound quality with ultra compact design and sleek, functional operation”. They should know, they invented the technology. The integration is remarkable and mostly unnoticeable, featuring the famed pop-up dash-mounted tweeters and other cleverly integrated components including dual 140mm woofers on either side of the center stack (down by your feet), a 90mm midrange unit in each front door, 90mm midrange and 19mm tweeter in the center dash, a 90mm midrange and 19mm tweeter in each rear quarter, and a 200mm subwoofer behind the rear seat, under the rear bench. The sound quality at virtually any volume is fairly remarkable for an OE system—clean, clear, distortion-free, and much richer than in other B&O systems we’ve tested. The soundstage is a little narrow and the bass can lack a little definition, depending on the type of track you're listening to, but overall it offers a rich, dynamic audio experience. Add a high-end aftermarket subwoofer and amp and you're pretty much there.



Sadly, the control ergonomics aren’t very intuitive to use. In fact, they can be downright confusing. All functions, such as playback mode, browsing MP3 playlists or radio stations, and access to nav functions are controlled either by a multifunction knob next to a pitifully tiny digital readout below the ignition slot (center dash), or a joystick-style controller in the center of the dash. Were you to spend enough time with it you’d memorize the labyrinthine controls, but a couple of days in our test car wasn’t enough. For example, it took us probably half an hour to find the B&O’s audio tone adjustments—and when we came back the next morning, we’d forgotten how to find them again!



The nav display, too, is deplorable in a car of this overall caliber. It’s a flip-up unit that deploys from the top of the dashboard center stack on ignition, but unlike more impressive units offered by the Germanic competition, it’s small, awkwardly angled, and relatively low-res. Likewise, our tester was equipped with a Rear Seat Entertaiment package ($3,350) that included similarly small, unimpressive LCD displays in the front-seat backrests. In a lesser car perhaps the TVs wouldn't seem quite so lackluster. It must be said: A significantly larger, high-resolution LED or LCD array, centrally mounted in the center dash and consolidating all infotainment controls, along with larger rear-seat screens and access to the RSE controls from the actual rear seats—if it’s possible, we couldn’t figure that out either—would be huge improvements.

Still, it’s frightfully easy to forget your complaints by ensconcing yourself in the wraparound cockpit and simply driving the car. Nothing sounds like an Aston Martin V12 at full song; some would argue it gives the pretty incredible B&O audio a run for its money in terms of aural enjoyment. And just to reiterate, this is one four-door that truly drives like the sports car it claims to be, with razor-sharp steering turn-in, a taut yet not uncomfortable ride for exceptional handing—and did we mention the engine?