Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Aston Martin Rapide Luxe revealed


The Aston Martin Rapide Luxe

The Aston Martin Rapide LuxeAston Martin has launched a new trim level for the Rapide – the Aston Martin Rapide Luxe – offering bespoke paint and luxury appointmentsFor some reason Aston Martin has decided that they need to offer a new trim level on the Rapide – the Aston Martin Rapide Luxe. Which, if this were a rather more prosaic car, we’d understand. You need to define for the punter the pecking order within a range, and you need an excuse to extract a few bob more in the showroom.

But on an Aston Martin? The same Aston Martin who will do whatever you ask to any car you buy as long as you give them access to your bank account? The Aston Martin who will paint your car sky blue pink with yellow dots and trim it in zebra skin, if sir desires? It would seem so.

So if you want prêt-à-porter trim on your new Aston Martin Rapide instead of bespoke you now can. The Rapide Luxe offers ‘Exclusive’ paint jobs such as Concours Blue and Quantum Silver and a set of ‘Bespoke’ alloys. That’s about it for the exterior – unless you count the custom luggage to match the interior.

The interior itself gets extra goodies such as rear entertainment, 1,000 watt Bang & Olufsen, heated and cooled seats and glass switchgear. All very pleasant, and you can expect to pay an extra £17.5k on top of a regular Rapide to grab the Ghia Luxe version. Which you can from now.

There is apparently no truth in the rumour that the DB9 will soon be available as the DB9 GL, DB9 XL and DB9 Ghia.