Man Maths: Aston Martin Rapide

But that’s not why I want one or, perhaps more accurately, fondly toy with the idea of having one with no real intention of actually going through with it. To me its appeal lies in a single memory. It was about 15 years ago and we’d gone to the Bruntingthorpe runway in one with the aforementioned Porsche in tow, to see which was quicker.

And yes, it was always going to be the Porsche; but when we arrived we found a soaking track, ensuring the Porsche would win by an even greater margin, because it had four-wheel drive, launch control and a dual-clutch gearbox. So to level things up a bit we put four people in the Porsche and only one in the Aston and the Rapide still got stuffed. If you’re interested, the video is still out there.

I couldn’t have cared less for the result, because I was too busy skidding about in what turned out to be possibly the best balanced four-door car I’ve driven – up there with an E39 BMW M5 – but with a 6-litre V12 soundtrack. It probably wasn’t intended, but that extended wheelbase brought a new level of sweetness to what was already one of the most playful Grand Tourers out there. And I just love the contrast of a car with such elegant lines on the outside, but concealing the heart of the true hooligan within.

Two more things, which can rarely be said for cars such as this: Rapides are both rare, and affordable. The How Many Left website lists around 660 taxed examples in the UK compared to something nearer 3500 DB9s. Yet AutoTrader has one for sale for less than £29,000, and you can spend more than that on a new Nissan Micra. Yes, really.

Now, that is for a 2010 Rapide with around 60,000 miles on the clock and it’s not really the car you want. The Rapide S that replaced it in 2013 is a far superior car, with power uprated from 463bhp to 542bhp, but better even than that is a 2015 model year car (introduced in late 2014) because that swapped out its slow old six-speed auto for a brand new eight-speeder, knocking the 0-62mph time down from 4.9sec to 4.2sec and boosting the top speed from 190mph to a whacking 203mph. Not very important I grant, but instructive nonetheless.

Unsurprisingly for a late and mechanically more modern car, you’ll pay extra, but I still found a late 2014 car for £42,990 with 48,000 miles on the clock which strikes me as value, at least for the brave. Because it’s not the kind of car you can just throw away if you get a big bill.

So I’d do my due diligence with great care, but if the car’s had a quiet life, a small number of owners and appears to have spent its time just trolling up and down motorways, it could be a route into an exceedingly beautiful, V12-powered four-door family car (albeit with pretty limited rear room) for one-tenth of the average transaction price of a Ferrari Purosangue. Sounds like value to me.

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