The temperature outside is 51 degrees. (That’s Celsius). I can’t see more than 100 yards metres? in any direction because airborne sand is swirling all around us, but I do know there’s little out there but a world of hurt. The desert is vast, flat and featureless – as far removed as it’s possible to be from the romantic landscapes conjured up by visions of Lawrence of Arabia, camels and Bedouin tents. This is an extreme environment. This is Kuwait.
Ignoring the nagging voices in my head, I open the Aston Martin’s rear door and climb out to face the stifling heat, to experience first hand what this car is being subjected to. Every inch of bare skin is suddenly sandblasted by the desert wind and every fibre of my being is telling me to get back inside the car, where a leather-lined, supremely comfortable and climate-controlled oasis of an interior awaits. After a few minutes one grain of sand too many finds its way behind my sunglasses and I admit defeat, open the Aston Martin’s rear door again and climb back inside.
‘Aston Martin’s rear door’; yes, you read that right. This is the new four-door Rapide – now fully arrived, after its concept’s debut in 2006 – and it’s being put through its paces in the final stages of development testing. From the freezing wastelands of the Arctic Circle to the Middle East; from the craziness of the Nürburgring in Germany to the staggering complexity of the Stelvio Pass in Italy; the Rapide has seen and done it all and, frankly, it’s been no holiday.
In my naivety I had previously thought that, if a car’s mechanics had already been proved through this kind of testing, it needn’t be repeated for every derivative. I was wrong. Despite the Rapide’s bonded-aluminium VH-platform architecture, 6.0-litre V12 engine and Touchtronic transmission having already excelled themselves throughout Aston Martin’s current range, and been the subject of many years’ intense research and development, it by no means lets Rapide off the hook.
If a car is desert-proof, it will go the distance anywhere. While manufacturers have, in times past, carried out pre-production testing in extreme environments such as Death Valley or the Australian Outback, the sheer heat and stifling conditions experienced there can, these days, be recreated easily in a research laboratory. Aston Martin’s Vehicle Engineering Manager, Simon Barnes, has evidently had enough of the sandstorm outside too and joins me inside the Rapide to explain his motives. I ask him why, in this day and age, he still finds it necessary to transport a car thousands of miles to one of the harshest places on the planet, when this could all be done on-site at the Gaydon factory.
‘It’s easy to bake a car in an oven,’ admits Barnes. ‘But there’s more to hot weather testing than ambient temperatures. For instance, the driving standards in Kuwait are, on the whole very different to those in Europe, Cars here are constantly driven bumper-to-bumper in extreme heat, which puts more pressure on the cooling system as less air is directed into the front of the car. There are so many variables that only testing in real-world conditions like this will do.’
The desert causes its own, unique set of problems too. ‘We’ve spent just one day out here in this,’ he continues, ‘and already the headlamp glass is shot. The front number plate delaminated too and by the time we get back to the UK the windscreen will need replacing because it’s constantly being etched by the sand. Airboxes need emptying daily and the heat puts a strain on all the electrical items.’ Of course, this is all grist to the R&D mill, and with lessons duly learned, the end product will have adapted accordingly.
Despite the Rapide being, at first glance, similar in appearance to the DB9, every single body panel is different and the extra length of the car can inflict strains that would never come to light unless Aston Martin’s development team was this thorough. As Barnes points out, this new Aston Martin has a strong potential market in the Middle East and who’s to say these customers won’t want to drive through a Kuwaiti desert during a sandstorm?
I’m sharing space here with a lot of electrical cables. These feed information from the dozens of sensors strategically placed about the car to the data logger currently sitting in the boot space. Oil and water temperatures, the speed with which climate control reaches full effectiveness, the amount of heat being blasted at the roof by the sun – all this data is logged along with details about the journey (location, names of passengers, time of day, etc.) and this information is sent electronically each night to the Gaydon factory.
If Barnes’ team discovers there are software improvements that can be made, this revised data is sent back before the next day’s driving so the Rapide’s refinement process can continue unabated. The likes of you and I might never be able to pick up on these subtle tweaks but they’re still made and are part and parcel of what makes Aston Martins so special: attention to detail.
‘I think we’ll go back into Kuwait City now,’ Barnes says, evidently fed up with being in no man’s land, ‘have lunch and leave the car to soak for an hour or so.’ Again my naivety comes to the fore and I ask if that’s to see the effect of cooling on the Rapide’s body panels. He laughs and explains that ‘soaking’ isn’t turning a hosepipe on the car but rather leaving it in direct sunshine to soak up all that heat in order to monitor how quickly the climate control recovers and brings the cabin down to the desired temperature.
I ride once again in the Rapide’s supremely comfortable rear quarters, enjoying the novelty of being in an Aston Martin rear seat with plenty of room to move about. This being a pre-production development car, the DVD screens set into the front seat headrests are inoperative but the Rapide’s dual-zone climate control is thankfully working very well indeed and the centre console’s raised air vents make for a pleasant desert experience.
As we head into the madness of the city traffic, with its nose-to-tail gridlock, other road users point, stare and take photographs with their mobile phones. Within hours we’ll be stars on YouTube and it’s wonderful to see that the appreciation of the Rapide’s undisputable beauty knows no national boundaries. In fact the Rapide is one of those rare cars that makes me want to be in two places at once: inside, enjoying the exquisite cabin and outside, enjoying the elegant looks and sounds of the world’s most beautiful four-door, four-seater sports car.
After lunch, the Rapide has indeed been soaking in the sunshine for over an hour. Opening my door and getting inside, the heat is at first stifling and yet, thanks to the fastidious efforts of those obsessive engineers, the cabin is chilled within seconds. It’s good to know that, in an increasingly virtual world, there’s still no substitute for a real experience when it comes to developing an Aston Martin. The Rapide is indeed desert-proof. Which means it will go the distance wherever in the world you happen to drive – and believe me, you’ll want to go a fair distance.
‘It’s easy to bake a car in an oven, but there’s more to hot weather testing than ambient temperatures… Only testing in real-world conditions like the Kuwaiti desert will do’
If Barnes’ team discovers there are software improvements that can be made, this revised data is fed back to Gaydon every evening before the next day’s driving, so the Rapide’s refinement process can continue unabated