A Used Aston Martin Rapide Is a $60,000 Ultra-Luxury Bargain

This is a 2011 Aston Martin Rapide and it is an absolute used car luxury sedan bargain. I say that because this is a beautiful sleek v12 powered luxury sedan that's starting to become surprisingly affordable. Not too many people consider the Rapide but today I'm going to review this one and tell you why you should. I've borrowed this Rapide from iLusso which is an exotic car dealership here in Orange County in Southern California that has a fantastic inventory of cool exotic cars, Ferraris and Lamborghinis and Porsches, pretty much anything you can think of. You can check out iLusso by clicking the link in the description below and see their inventory. But today I'm talking Aston Martin and specifically the Rapide. Now the Rapide came out here in North America for the 2010 model year and it was sort of a super sedan, a sleek four-door Aston Martin designed to compete with other ultra luxury performance sedans like the Bentley Flying Spur and the Porsche Panamera Turbo. Early Rapide models like this one had a 5.9 liter v12 that made 470 horsepower and 450 pound-feet of torque which are pretty appealing numbers. Unfortunately the Rapide was too expensive, way too expensive. The starting price of this car back in 2011 was around $210,000 and that was before options. Add options and it wasn't uncommon to see sticker prices in the $300,000 range. It was just too much money so sales were slow and most people forgot about the Rapide entirely. But now you should remember because they're becoming affordable. These days a 2010 Rapide model can be purchased for under $50,000 and a nice 2011 model like this one will range from That's half of what an S-Class costs for a v12 Aston Martin. And today I'm going to review this car and show you around it. First I'm going to take you on a tour of the Rapide and show you all of its interesting quirks and features. Then I'm going to get it out on the road and drive it and then I'm going to give it a Doug's score. All right I'm going to start the quirks and features of the Rapide with getting in and that means starting with the key which is just cool. Look at this thing. For one thing it's heavy. It has a nice weight to it. Feels expensive and it looks good. Nice materials. The Aston Martin logo is on the top under glass which is just about the coolest key effect in the car industry. This is a special key for a special car. And next up moving on to the doors themselves. Now gullwing doors would be cool but they're impractical in a four-door car and frankly most cars. So Aston Martin has developed what they consider to be the next best thing. They're called swan doors. You can see they open up kind of like a bird's wing instead of directly parallel to the ground which gives the car a cooler look when the doors are open and also it helps clear curbs on some of Aston's lower sports car models. So you have these swan doors. You have them in front and the cool thing also in back. The rear doors in this car also have this kind of upward motion opening to look like a swan wing. Again special doors for a special car. And next up another unusual item with the doors. In a lot of cars especially high-end cars you open the door and the window will lower slightly because the window had been forming a seal with the car to keep rain out and when you open the door the window has to go down to kind of break the seal. Interestingly when you open the back door in a Rapide the rear window goes down most of the way. I'm not sure why they have it go down so far maybe so you don't hit your head or some other reason but that's what happens. When you close the back door in a Rapide you can see the window goes all the way back up and makes that seal again. It's an unusual amount to roll down. But maybe even more unusual is what happens when you go to open the front door in the Rapide because it's not just the front window that rolls down a little but the back window too. The Rapide has this kind of glass on glass design so both windows have to roll down when you're opening the front door in order to allow clearance for the door to open. That is not a very common design feature and when you go to close the door you can see that both windows then roll back up a little bit and form that seal around the window area in order to keep rain out of the car. Interesting. And next up we move inside the Rapide and I'm going to start in back because I figure if you're buying one of these over a regular Aston Martin coupe or convertible you probably do plan on using the back seats and I'm here to tell you they're not really all that big. I have the driver's seat where I would put it if I were sitting there and I don't really have much space for my knees back here. But you do have a lot more space than you would get in a regular two-door Aston Martin with tiny back seats. This is a reasonable four-door car with reasonable back seats just not exactly huge ones. Now beyond the sizing of these back seats it's worth noting the configuration back here is interesting. You do not have a rear bench seat in back. Instead you have two bucket seats and a rather large center console which I'll get to in a second and the bucket seats are actually sport seat style. They're very grippy they really hug you a lot more than basically any other back seat you'll see in pretty much any other car. But next up I want to move on to some of the controls back here and I'm going to start with the climate control system which is quite unusual and rather strange. All right to turn the airflow up so more or less air you just basically twist this little dial and the airflow increases or decreases that's pretty standard. But then you're thinking well how do you change the temperature? The answer is you press the mode button in the center of this dial and then a thermometer appears on the screen and you can move the temperature up or down. There's no stated temperature units but the top of the thermometer is hot and the bottom of the thermometer is cold I guess. Now that's not all that weird but the strangest part of the rear climate controls is definitely the heated and cooled seat controls. To access those you press the little heat seat button in the middle of this dial and then you can see a seat lights up on this side. In order to turn on the cooled seat you move this dial to the left and you can see the little blue lights are lighting up letting you know your cooled seat is on. In order to turn on the heated seat you turn the dial in the other direction the cooled seat turns off and then the heated seat starts to turn on and you can just turn the dial left right left right to switch between cooled and heated seats. And of course if you want to turn on the seat on the other side you just press the little seat button in the middle of the dial again the other side seat lights up and then you can twist the dial again for cooled or heated seats. This is actually pretty easy to use but it's a very unorthodox control never seen it like this in any other car including any other Aston Martin but it's what they've done here. Now also in this center control section and back you have a few buttons for the climate control the AC you can direct the air and you also have the button to lock the doors although it's worth noting this button does not also unlock the doors so once you've locked them you've committed. And next up also back here we have tiny little buttons that control the rear map lights you can see left and right controls corresponding to the left and right map lights which are mounted on the ceiling you push that control the map light turns on pretty simple. And next up speaking of tiny things back here let's talk cup holders you have two rear cup holders but they're very small not large enough for most drinks kind of an unusual size to go with. One interesting thing about the cup holders though they are leather lined this is the kind of luxury and quality you get in an Aston Martin you have a leather lined stitched cup holders they're so nice you don't really want to use them for cups. And next up in the vein of tiny things back here let's talk about rear seat storage a lot of cars have rear seat storage pockets on the backs of the front seats but the Rapide has extremely tiny rear seat storage pockets here these aren't even large enough for you to fit a cell phone in I'm not sure why they even bothered at all but they're there in case you're sitting in the back of the Rapide and you want a place to put your thimble. But with that said it's worth noting there's more storage back here than just those tiny little pockets on the back of the seats you also have a center console storage area you lift up this lid and you can see this is where the headphones are you have a couple of sets of headphones in here and you also have a remote in here of course this controls the rear seat screen system unfortunately this remote doesn't have any batteries in it so I can't turn this on but obviously this car is almost 10 years old it's not going to be a very advanced system anyway but you can probably use the system to listen to music and maybe watch stuff while you're sitting in the back of your Rapide and by the way one other notable item back here is the rear seat climate vents they're kind of at the front of this rear center console where it's tilted up and they're angled towards the rear seats and when you turn on the rear seat climate control these blow out a ton of air based on their position and their power these are probably the effective rear seat vents I have ever seen in any car so you can really cool down or heat up back here thanks to those vents and next up we move along to the back of the Rapide because I want to talk about the cargo area and first I'm going to start with just accessing the cargo area to get in there's not some trunk popper down here by the license plate that would be too pedestrian instead you have this silver button right in the center very small circle you push it and the trunk pops open and then you can open it the rest of the way and get inside I have always loved this little silver button to open Aston Martin trunks but anyway with the tailgate open you can see the cargo area and it's actually pretty large for a ultra luxury high performance sedan this is a pretty good amount of cargo space back here in case you want to put large items in the back of and check this out you can lower the rear seat backs press this little button next to the seat and then you can fold down the rear seat backs and then you get an even larger cargo area you can see what the seats fold down you actually have quite a bit of space back here which is a surprising thing to say about a V12 Aston Martin super sedan now one thing you may have noticed is the cargo area is open to the passenger compartment there's no divider between them which could cause problems if you have something rolling around back here and you stop suddenly it could kind of shoot forward and injure someone but Aston Martin has thought of that this little panel actually flips up to act as a cargo divider so you can stick your stuff back there and make sure it won't roll around and get into your passenger area and finally our last interesting item with the cargo area comes with closing the tailgate in your car you may have a little plastic handle to help you close the tailgate in this car you have a fine leather strap because of course you do you pull on this leather strap and then the tailgate is closed pretty nice and finally one last item around back before i move up to the front seats i want to talk sound this car has quite an exhaust note you don't get this in an s-class take a listen and next up we move on to the front seats in the rapide where there are quite a few interesting quirks and features i'm going to start with just turning it on now in the middle of the center control stack area you have this circle that says engine start with the Aston Martin logo in the middle of it the way you start this car is you take the key and you put it into the center of that circle you push down on that Aston Martin logo but because the key has an Aston Martin logo in that glass on the end of it and when the car is started the Aston Martin logo is preserved it's actually a pretty ingenious way to do it quite nice if i may say now from there once you have the car started you can see that getting it into gear is a little unorthodox the gear selection is done with these buttons you have park and reverse on the left neutral and drive on the right and that's how you go between gears no gear lever or dial in this car and further down in the center control area also rather unusual the heated and cooled seat controls it's the same operation as in back but again kind of worth mentioning you push this button in the center to switch between the two seats up front and then you turn this dial to switch between cool or heated seats very odd way to do it most brands just have a heated seat button and a cooled seat button but Aston Martin is thinking outside the box and speaking of the controls in this car there are a lot of them buttons are particularly a theme in this center console area there are 35 individual buttons and five dials just in this area between the gear lever buttons and these buttons on the bottom there are 35 buttons and five dials in there now one reason why there are so many buttons and switches in here has to do with the car's infotainment system because it's purely a navigation system there are no other controls or operations integrated into this system and that's because this is a Garmin navigation system take a look in here and you can tell this is like a 10 year old Garmin like you probably had on a road trip or from a rental car agency before you had navigation on your phone it just looks horribly outdated and it is unquestionably this car's weak point it was this car's weak point back in 2010 as well but Aston Martin just didn't have enough money to develop their own navigation so they went with Garmin the same thing you'd buy at the store for like $299 and then pay a subscription fee pretty bad and speaking of that Garmin system it's kind of crazy to see that cheap old school screen surrounded by this beautiful wood and leather like you'd expect to get in an Aston Martin it's basically everything you think an Aston Martin would be and then that screen opens up and you're like oh by the way one other amazing thing about this navigation system screen aside from the fact that it's an early Garmin unit is that when you turn this car you are not greeted by a beautiful Aston Martin logo or some graphic or the word repeat instead you're asked to choose between easy mode and advanced mode I have never seen this in my entire life outside of a video game but I guess if you're someone who thinks that the navigation system is simply too easy to use you can put it on hard mode and use it there instead so strange now if there is any good news with this screen it's the fact that like I mentioned there aren't any other functions integrated in here so if you don't plan to use the navigation system you don't only have to deal with the screen everything else is controlled with all of these buttons and dials in the center control stack and speaking of this interior and the materials it's worth noting that it really is beautiful in here you get past that screen you look around and everything else is just so well put together beautiful leather beautiful stitching gorgeous wood on basically every surface even all of these buttons and switches feel good nicely weighted good to touch or turn if it's a dial everything in here is just really top quality far better than what you'd get in virtually every other luxury car from this era and next up a few interesting items in the gauge cluster one is the tachometer which doesn't operate like other tachometers because it's backwards you can see when I rev the engine the tach actually goes the opposite direction you would normally expect it to just a quirk of the Aston Martin and one other interesting Aston quirk in here is the owner's manual you can see it's this long thin rather oddly shaped owner's manual that's because it doesn't fit in the glove box which is rather small and which wasn't intended to carry the owner's manual instead it's designed to fit in this little pouch on the passenger side door you can see it's perfectly sized for that that's where the owner's manual goes in a rapide another quirk of the Aston Martin but maybe the biggest Aston Martin quirk is under the hood now earlier I told you this is a 5.9 liter v12 and indeed it is but you can see that it says on it 6.0 v12 somebody's got to be wrong here either me or Aston Martin and wouldn't you know it it's Aston Martin this engine displaces 5,935 cc's which we round down to 5.9 liters except that Aston rounds it up I guess to have a 6.0 instead of a 5.9 v12 now interestingly there's precedent to this for years Ford called its Mustang the 5.0 even though it had a 4.9 liter engine my Land Rover Defender has a 3.9 liter engine which Land Rover calls a 4.0 and of course Mercedes-Benz for years called it 6.2 v8 the 6.3 but it's still weird to see it 6.0 on an engine that isn't a 6.0 but really while that's quirky it's not that big of a deal doesn't really matter more important are this engine's numbers 470 horsepower and 450 pound-feet of torque those were excellent numbers 10 years ago and they're still quite respectable especially given this car's price point and so those are the quirks and features of the Aston Martin Rapide now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the Rapide now before I get started with the driving experience I do want to say yes this car is an utter bargain from an initial purchase standpoint compared to a modern or new luxury car the problem of course will come with maintaining it over however long you have it I don't think it's as bad as everyone thinks it will be I had an Aston Martin I had some trouble with it when I first got it but then I drove it 18,000 miles in one year to 34 states plus DC and Canada and it was flawless I got a picture of that car next to a bison in North Dakota not a lot of Aston owners have that so I think they can be reliable if you maintain them properly a lot of the issues my car had were at the start of the ownership experience I think because it sat for a while before I got it and started using it all the time and then it was fine so I am saying this car is a bargain but go in with your eyes open you are not going to get out of this thing cheaper to own than a Mercedes Benz under any circumstances but it might not be as bad as you think and you get to have an Aston Martin so let's talk having an Aston Martin when this car first came out I thought it was the coolest thing it is a really beautiful car this is an example of a four-door kind of sloping roof car done right the early Panamera the Accord cross tour they were such disasters but this was the same kind of car but nice looking as for the driving experience it is quick there's no doubt about that it's not as fast as you might think couple things it's it's certainly slower than a Panamera turbo transmission is undoubtedly one reason for this the shifts are just kind of slow they're labored they're not all that quick Panamera turbo had the dual clutch automatic PDK this thing is light years behind that in terms of actual power and performance it feels pretty good and it sounds amazing I've driven all the cars in this segment flying spur and Panamera and anything else you can think of rolls ghost and this is the one that has the sound this thing was was more aggressive and more exciting than those ultimately this car a lot of the allure and the appeal to this car is the fact that it's cool the technology as I showed you not so great I mean the navigation system screen absolutely ridiculous but there's a lot of cool things about this car for one thing it is absolutely beautiful it's beautiful outside beautiful inside plus it's rare the Rapide really is kind of the forgotten ultra luxury sedan most people remember Aston Martin for its coupes a lot of people just forget that the Rapide even existed but it did and of course it's cool because it looks cool and it's fast it's a v12 and it's fun and and those are those are benefits and I think that they start to become real benefits when you start to get lower and lower in price I mean you can get a higher mileage 2010 one of these in the 40s that's a pretty good number but you want to spend you want to get a nice one spend 65 70 that's still not so bad that's like a mid-spec e-class or you could have a v12 Aston as long as you understand what's coming and so that's the 2011 Aston Martin Rapide this is a special car and while it was way too expensive back when it was new it's starting to become more and more appealing now as prices become more affordable especially if you're interested in a cool sedan that nobody else has right now you could buy a new s-class or for half the money you could get a rare v12 Aston Martin anyway with that it's time to give the Rapide a dug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the Rapide is truly beautiful and it earns an 8 out of 10 acceleration does 0 to 60 in the high 4 second range and it gets a 6 out of 10 handling is fine great for a sedan and it gets a 6 out of 10 fun factor is pretty good it's nice to drive that would be better with an improved transmission and it gets a 6 out of 10 cool factor is strong it's an Aston Martin luxury sedan but it's similarly styled to other more common Aston models so it earns a 6 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 32 out of 50 next up are the daily categories and features it's reasonably well equipped nothing crazy and it gets a 5 out of 10 comfort is fine but low for a luxury sedan this is more sport than luxury and it gets a 6 out of 10 quality is a mixed bag it's beautiful inside and out with truly fantastic materials but reliability is a concern and that Garmin it gets a 6 out of 10 practicality is also mixed it has only four seats and the back seats are tight but four doors is nice and the cargo area is bigger than most rivals so it gets a 5 out of 10 finally value this is a deal compared to its original price but it's still 70 grand for a 10 year old questionably reliable luxury sedan with a Garmin it gets a 6 out of 10 for a total daily score of 28 out of 50 added up and the dug score is 60 out of 100 which places it here against other luxury cars and sporty upscale cars from this era the rapide succeeds as it's both a luxury sedan and a sporty car and it does both things reasonably well for a lot less money than it cost when it was new