 "Lagonda Taraf")
County Warwickshire, in the West Midlands, is where we lay our scene. Two weeks ago, the weather was nice, and when the weather is nice in England, sonnets and oil paintings just happen. A fresh breeze curled the treetops. Clouds tumbled. Bands of sunlight moved across open fields as if searching for peasants to transfigure.
And so close to the factory!
Yes, about that: The Midlands is the historic heart of the British car industry, including Gaydon, home to Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin. The Midlands is also a global center of stubbornness. The pastoralism visitors enjoy is only by dint of bloody rows over land use, zoning, agricultural subsidies and NIMBY-ism going back to the Middle Ages.
Where's this going? The roads. Just outside the industrial zones and motorways, the roads pipe down to narrow, hold-your-breath country lanes. And the car in hand, the Lagonda Taraf, by Aston Martin, is as wide as church doors. By all rights, a car and a half. Shrubbery snapped the left-side mirror as I gave way to an oncoming lorry. Jeez! That mirror is about half my annual salary.
The Taraf-a $1 million, 195-mph super-sports limousine-is nothing less than a commissioned piece built for the company's Middle Eastern financiers, who are also clients, if the usual arrangements apply. Since 2014, Aston Martin has rounded up more than $700 million in funding to reboot the company in the next five years, with three new car lines (sports car, GT, and super-luxury Lagonda sedan) and a crossover to be built in Wales, the DBX. Aston is going after Rolls-Royce and Bentley, cheeky monkey.
Along the way, discreet gentlemen made discreet inquiries about building a proper limousine. Yes, the answer came back, it would be feasible to modify the aluminum structure under the (cramped, beautiful) Rapide S sedan, extend the wheelbase 7.9 inches, and devote that extra space to the rear-cabin accommodation. Such a car appeared in draft form at the 2014 Geneva motor show, cast in a wrathful shadow of carbon-fiber and turreted black glass. It took its name and inspiration from the pencil-thin Lagonda of the 1970s.
Mechanically, the Taraf retains the Rapide's naturally aspirated 5.9-liter, 540-hp V12 - a sonorous glory, with savage torque at mid-clock - and eight-speed rear transaxle. The presence and aurality of the powertrain has been retrenched beneath the Taraf's deeper drifts of soundproofing, and you can only dig them out again with a very heavy foot.
Taraf also inherits the prominent driveline tunnel, and the bondage-tight leather hillock dividing the cabin east and west. Compared to another super-sport limousine, the Bentley Flying Spur, the Taraf's owner accommodations are decidedly cozy. On the other hand, it makes the Bentley look like a chrome-plated bedpan.
The Taraf uses Aston's legacy cabin electronics, much of which dates back more than a decade. Among the fantasia: the crystal keyfob, crystal-button gear selectors, the cluster of rotary dials capped in pewter-like alloy, and the world's least readable GPS screen.
In Aston's new cars, like the DB11 I'll review next week, the cockpit electronics and rotary controller are all sourced from Mercedes-Benz. While these devices function vastly better, I miss the gorgeous, awkward steampunk of the old dials. I predict this era of Aston switchgear will be hugely collectible. As long as collectors don't try to tune the stereo.
How does the Taraf drive? Well, the driver is an employee, so who really cares? Beyond that, the Taraf feels familiar, with the same stiff, resolute timber as the other Astons built on the aluminum VH monocoque. The Taraf's stately skin is lightweight carbon-fiber, not pressed aluminum, as with the Rapide S. As a result the larger car weighs about the same as the smaller, around 4,500 pounds. The sport of the car is roundly girdled and modulated for this application, but the Taraf can still rip. Confidence builds, eventually. But it's like graduating from a medium to an extra-large broadsword.
Want one? Too bad. Most of the 200 Tarafs are spoken for, and nearly all of them are headed to the Orient as fast as cargo 747s can carry them. The Taraf is not homologated for sale in the U.S. market.
Wait. Two hundred copies, practically all sold, not even U.S. legal? Then why even write about it? Because the Taraf is as close to an instant classic as I have ever driven.
The highlight of my car year is this weekend, when I serve as an honorary judge at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, in Monterey, Calif. While I'm no authority on classic cars, I know what classic-car experts look for in awarding Best in Show. The Taraf has the cut of a car that could earn Best in Show, circa 2066, let's say.
I thought you'd ask, so I have a list.
Imposing beauty: Well, we'll see about the beauty, won't we? But the Taraf is certainly an eyefull-17.7 feet nose to tail and almost 6.3 feet wide, and not a wasted inch. The Taraf combines fine line and sheer scale, a multiplier of magnificence.
Backstory: You have the geopolitically rich tapestry of pampered sheiks being whisked across the desert in the back of their custom Aston Martins, a notion somewhere between Scheherazade and Daniel Yergin. The Taraf has historical resonance and will speak to future generations much as the gilded carriages in the Hermitage do. I predict History will also ask who in their right minds would want to ride in the back seat at 180 mph.
Rarity: Aston Martin seems to have passed some critical threshold in making limited-series cars. Examples include the One-77 (with 77 made) or the Zagato-bodied Vanquish. In this respect, Aston is doing regular business like pre-war luxury automakers with coach-building boutiques. In any event, with only 200 copies, many of them destined for private collections in faraway places, the Taraf is a born unicorn.
Bloodline: The car world is on the threshold of a technical transformation, the details of which are hazy, but it's a safe bet they don't involve many naturally aspirated V12 engines, spring suspensions and mechanical limited-slip diffs. The Taraf appears at the twilight of the old Aston regime, a bell-jar of all that has been winning, charismatic and self-styled about Aston in the 21st century, from the big-Brit 12s to the crazy luxury-Zeppelin controls.
You want one. You know you do.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
