Behind the Wheel | 2014 Aston Martin Vanquish: Candy for the Eyes, Music to the Ears

Rolls-Royce and Bentley, brothers-in-arms for decades, were split up and absorbed by, respectively, BMW and Volkswagen. Both brands have achieved record sales since. VW also revived Lamborghini and Bugatti, lavishing resources and components to allow these tiny and often-troubled brands to thrive as never before. Ferrari and Maserati, once fierce Italian rivals, now share and share alike, playing nice within the Fiat family.

Even Porsche, so proud of its record as a small independent, succumbed to hubris and tried to swallow Volkswagen in a takeover — and found itself eaten by VW instead. Yet Porsche, too, sells more cars than ever around the world.

Among the pedigreed names, that leaves two British marques, Aston Martin and the even tinier Lotus, standing with no sugar-daddy automaker to lend support.

For Aston Martin, that tenuous position raises a question: how strongly can the company — propped up for now by Italian private equity and Middle East petrodollars — compete against Ferrari or Bentley, brands with munificent parents helping to pay the bills?

One thing’s for sure: 10 minutes in the company of the 2014 Vanquish, and even a casual car fan would wish this 100-year-old company a fruitful second century.

That’s because the Vanquish, which assumes the DBS’s position atop the Aston hierarchy, seems to be appreciated by one and all as one of the world’s most nakedly pretty automobiles. It’s hard to drive the Vanquish anywhere, and impossible to stop, without people popping up to remind you of that fact, as though you were showing off a particularly photogenic child.

Second, and almost unfairly, the sound of this Gabriel is as beautiful as its looks, a 12-cylinder, 565-horsepower Hallelujah chorus. That’s a 55-horsepower jump from the DBS, with additions like direct injection, dual variable valve timing and a “big wing” intake manifold.

Oddly, perhaps, that sound and beauty trace their roots to workaday Detroit. Ford owned Aston outright from 1994 to 2007, bequeathing a new factory in Gaydon, England. It also carved out space in a plant in Cologne, Germany, where Aston is hand-building its 5.9-liter V-12 engines.

Tooled up and modernized, the oldest living sports car company went from just 43 worldwide sales in 1993 to nearly 6,900 by 2007. Just as important, a longtime Ford designer, Ian Callum, blossomed into a star with the DB7 of 1994. That DB’s signature shape was burnished in the later DB9 and Vantage by Callum’s successor, Henrik Fisker (now perhaps better known for the troubled plug-in car company that he started, then departed).

The Vanquish is the most blazing riff yet on that 20-year theme. By updating Aston’s bonded-and-riveted aluminum platform and a V-12 engine whose thirst is increasingly at odds with regulations, the Vanquish works to justify its $282,110 base price, a cinematic splurge of luxury and force.

Making its glamorous way through the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, the Vanquish stood out like the Duchess of Cambridge at the local tattoo parlor. In Manhattan, when the Aston growled up to a Chelsea wine bar, the Italian managers threw open the building’s glass-walled garage door to better display the car, despite chilly temperatures; one joked that I should just pull the Aston inside.

Such gratuitous charm is influenced by Aston’s $1.8 million One-77 supercar, including the Vanquish’s all-carbon-fiber body, demure recessed grille and a valved exhaust system that opens its gilded throat under acceleration. Buyers can expose a little or a lot of the lightweight carbon twill by opting to forgo paint on the roof or side mirrors, or to leave a full wraparound carbon-fiber band on the lower body. In any case, the driver will cringe every time the low front air dam sands the pavement.