Aston Martin V12 Vanquish

Come to Jim Clark country and you understand how Scotland's greatest racing driver honed his incredible natural skills. In the Borders, the beautiful farming countryside that separates Scotland and England, the roads are divided into two distinct categories. Here, Jim Clark - born into farming but world driving champion in 1963 and 1965 - learned to drive on the hump backed, up and down, straight roads first built by the Romans, and the others that flow through gentle, sweeping curves across a more undulating landscape.

Wider and faster than the hedge-row lanes of southern England, and created long ago, or so it seems, by people who instinctively understood that at some future time, good cars and enthusiast drivers would love this challenging environment. A more perfect location for the driving launch of Aston Martin's new Vanquish is hard to imagine. Except for the speed cameras. One flash and you're safe, two flashes and you're gone. On one 60km stretch on the A68 running north to Edinburgh, 15 cameras keep the locals restrained. Our hosts warned us, but stifling the Vanquish is not an easy matter when all 336kW constantly demand to be unleashed. I expect the fine to arrive any day.

Not far from the Borders, in Dumfries, Ian Callum was born in 1955. By the time he was six, the young Scot was drawing cars and knew, even then, all he wanted to do was design them. This is an important link, because the talented Callum is the man responsible for the marvellous appearance of the Vanquish.

See Vanquish and the now eight-year old DB7 together and you marvel that, though both wear the same design themes and proportions and couldn't be anything but Aston Martins, they could hardly be more different. Callum, now director of design at Jaguar and Aston Martin, has endowed the Vanquish with styling that evokes the feeling of the beautiful Zagato DB4, without ever appearing retro. Where the DB7 is feminine, delicately drawn, flowing softly, the Vanquish is taut, aggressive, its clearly defined wings forcing the glass-house inboard to create rear haunches that visually thrust the car forward.

On the road or at rest, the Vanquish oozes real presence and is a far more coherent and pleasing design than the 550 Maranello Ferrari, the Vanquish's natural front engined/rear drive rival at the top end of the V12 Grand Turismo-meets-sports car class. It's a fair measure of Aston's confidence that it is prepared to price the Vanquish slightly above - $557,00 versus $520,00 - its Italian competitor. The new model replaces the archaic V8, whose basic construction methods date back to the late '50s DB4. To increase production from around one and a half cars a week to a planned eight cars a week, Newport Pagnell gets a new manufacturing process for a car that combines a bonded aluminium monocoque tub, carbon-fibre transmission tunnel, braided carbon-fibre A-pillars and aluminium panels. Sounds exotic and implies the Vanquish should be comparatively light. It's not.

At 1835kg, the Aston weighs rather more than the conventionally constructed 1690kg 550. But Aston (whose engineers bought a Ferrari as a research tool) reckons the Maranello weighs rather more than the official figure, if not quite as much as the Vanquish. Still, lingering memories of the incredibly heavy-to-drive 1975kg V8 mean the new car's weight is a potential issue. At least until you spend wheel time in the Aston on roads, like these, that demand terrific handling, test body control to the limit, and provoke an appetite for immense performance and braking. The Vanquish delivers on all counts. Far from feeling ponderous, it grows smaller around you and goes remarkably close to deserving the agile tag.

You know, from the moment the red 'engine start' button engages and the V12's forceful warble breaks the silence, that the Vanquish's soul is the engine. Few cars sounds as potent at idle. This initial aural perception inexorably expands as the tacho needle swings to the 7200rpm cut-out. It intensifies as the exhaust by-pass valves open at 4000rpm to reduce back-pressure and liberate even more power.

And what powers the Vanquish is a Stage 2 development of the Cosworth Engineering-supplied 5.9-litre V12, first seen in the DB7. Lighter parts - mostly in the valvetrain, but also the crankshaft and camshafts - mean it's 18kg lighter, while new inlet and exhaust systems produce an extra 27kW and 16Nm of torque. Whatever Aston has done, the result is impressive because the V12 is notably smoother, more responsive and freer revving, its performance prodigious and with a harder edge than the DB7.

Aston claims zero to 100km/h in under 4.7secs, but even that's a misleading measure. This is acceleration that grows in intensity to at least 225km/h (I ran out of road) and on to an official 305km/h. Yet, in the tall 54km/h per 1000rpm sixth gear, it has the refinement to make 200km/h cruising relaxed, effortless.

You change gears by Ferrari-style paddles fixed to the steering column, their alloy arms superbly finished, like so much of the interior, in leather. There is no alternative to the automated six-speed manual, even for the American market. A development of the Magnetti-Marelli system used on the Ferrari 360 Modena, it operates in a similar style: tap the left paddle to down shift, the right to change up. An automatic mode shifts gears for the lazy driver; a sport setting speeds up the changes to a best of 250 milliseconds.

That sounds leisurely by the standards of the 360 Modena (150 milliseconds), and distinctly slow by the BMW M3 SMG's 80 milliseconds, but doesn't drive that way. Learn to momentarily feather the throttle at each shift and it changes beautifully, the understanding becoming part of the driver's discovery process. Downshifts, revs matched by the engine management system, are always fluent.

Aston's chassis engineers, with fine tuning help from Lotus' John Miles and Jaguar's Mike Cross, followed the classic route of double wishbones and coils all round, with but one damper setting. Yokohama, the sole supplier, developed special AVS Sport tyres specifically for the Vanquish. It doesn't let you down, for even on these roads, the driver's confidence builds quickly. This is not an intimidating car, despite its massive performance and 1923mm width, the suspension coping with everything the driver and road can throw at it. The ride is brilliant, supple and absorbing, yet taut and controlled, and more comfortable than the Ferrari, especially at low speeds. You learn that the steering is precise around the straight ahead for quick turn-in, turning less aggressive as lock is applied, the suspension tuning obviously aimed at on-the-limit predictability. Combine this with massive grip and terrific balance and you have a car that, as required, can be submissive, sensationally quick and constantly entertaining.

The interior, contemporary and intelligent, arouses a real sense of occasion that's not blighted by the use of Jaguar components for most of the minor controls. Famously, the Ford Ka air vents were swapped for Volvo vents after former Porsche and Daewoo R&D boss, Ulrich Bez, arrived as Aston Martin CEO in mid-2000. More importantly, Bez insisted the packaging engineers find more interior room for tall drivers. They've been partially successful. At first, the lack of stretching room for my 1.92 metre frame worried me. The deficiency of space remains a major flaw of the DB7. With an all-new car, and one almost 4.7m long, this should never have been a problem.

At the end of a day's driving, it was no longer an issue. Still, I'd like to be able to tilt the rather flat cushion of the Recaro buckets and pull the steering closer to the driver. Not so easily dismissed is the blind spot created by an extremely wide windscreen pillar. It's positioned just off the driver's sight line and on roundabouts, and through tight corners, can obscure other vehicles.

In truth, to claim the Vanquish is the best ever Aston Martin is not saying much and sells it short. This car, so obviously more thoroughly developed than any in Aston's history, is far better than that and a truly worthy competitor for the 550 Maranello. Jim Clark, I know, would approve. If he'd lived, the Vanquish is just the kind of car I imagine a now 65-year old Clark would own. Super quick, understated, relaxed, comfortable, beautifully finished and a pleasure to drive and admire.