Price:
: £80 000 (about R857 000)
Performance:
Maximum speed 270km/h, 0-100km/h in 4.9sec, combined fuel consumption 17.3 litre/100km.
Now I don't mean to boast but, after a couple of minutes of brushing, my electric toothbrush automatically switches to an intermittent buzz to stop me wearing my teeth down.
It's quite useful for those days when you might all too easily stand semi-comatose in front of the bathroom mirror all morning; I can't help thinking they should fit something similar to the new Aston Martin V8 Vantage to stop you frittering away entire afternoons gazing at it in a similar dribbling trance.
Like those Michelangelo sketches at the British Museum or that photo of Sienna Miller in February's Vanity Fair, this car is hypnotically, intoxicatingly divine.
Even the most beautiful cars have a bad angle. Front-on, the E-Type Jaguar's narrow track makes it look like a toy train; side-on, you can see that the Lamborghini Miura sits just a little too low on its suspension.
There has never been a car that was faultless from every angle. Until now.
Henrik Fisker, the Danish designer who drew the V8 (before leaving the company last year to make bespoke-bodied BMWs for German playboys), achieved the ultimate evolution of the design themes initiated by his predecessor, Ian Callum, with the Vanquish.
Marek Reichman, the new head of design at Aston, is holding a poisoned chalice, if you ask me.
Not to harp on, but so gorgeous is this car that it could drive like a Hillman Hunter and I'm not sure I'd care much (there's a convertible due in the summer, but I can't bring myself to look at the pictures - I'm having trouble enough getting anything done with the V8 in my driveway as it is).
But, of course, it is every bit as addictive to drive as it is to look at. The bowel-loosening banshee shriek from its highly modified Jaguar V8 has much to do with this.
There have been grumblings that this sound and fury signifies little by way of performance, and it is true a Porsche 911 - the car the Aston was designed to beat - will outpace it on a track, but let's not be silly. The V8 is still unfathomably quick and agile by any standards.
In case you're thinking that this American-owned, German-run company's products bear little relation to Astons of old, you're wrong. The V8 is an old-school, macho machine. The clutch is hefty, the throttle unforgiving and the gear change is a two-handed job.
And don't even ask about the fuel consumption.
Steering shudder
Meanwhile, some severe shudders through the steering suggested that Aston - which, in its darkest days, before the Ford takeover, was making cars at the rate of less than one a week - has a little way to go before it can match the engineering excellence of Porsche (current production, 78 000 a year).
You enter the V8 by prising a slender aluminium lever from the bodywork and, trying desperately to look as if you and the car belong together, slink down into the smooth, hard leather seat.
You sit, barricaded by a large centre console wrapped in chunky-stitched leather, facing an elaborate array of "chronograph"-style instruments and neat, rectangular buttons. Press one and the sat-nav screen - a £1750 (R18 750) option) unfolds silently from the top of the fascia.
You can't help but do a quick scan for an ejector-seat button in the gear knob but the truth is, although Daniel Craig will be driving an Aston in "Casino Royale", the company no longer needs the endorsement of the world's most enduring film hero to sell its cars. - The Independent, London