Vanquish

Ian Callum, later famous for the Jaguar F-Type and XK, designed the Vanquish as his final project at TWR Design before moving to Jaguar. The brief was to create a car that looked unmistakably like an Aston Martin while being entirely modern.

The result was one of the most beautiful grand tourers of the 2000s: long hood, short rear deck, pronounced fenders, and a grille that established the template for every Aston Martin that followed. The body used a combination of carbon fiber, aluminum, and steel in a structure bonded with aerospace adhesives.

The 5.9-liter V12 was created by joining two Ford Duratec V6 blocks at a 60-degree angle, a solution engineered by Cosworth. It produced 460 hp and a sound described by Jeremy Clarkson as 'the voice of God.' The automated manual gearbox was the car's weakness: slow to shift and jerky at low speeds.

Each Vanquish was hand-assembled at Aston Martin's Newport Pagnell factory, the last car to be built there before production moved to Gaydon. 2,580 were produced across standard and S variants.

Values have risen from a low of GBP 50,000 a decade ago to GBP 120,000 to GBP 200,000 for clean examples.