The styling upgrade centres on plenty of aggressive styling cues along with re-imagined side-strake and power bulge in the bonnet. There’s a dark mesh grille up front and all-new carbon fibre diffuser bringing up the rear. Inside, too, the theme is dark and moody with lots of carbon-fibre and dark anodised aluminium.
The cool new look rather belies what lurks below – and that is the running gear of the outgoing V12 Vantage with its naturally-aspirated 6.0-litre V12 and seven-speed manual gearbox. Getting it up to V600 spec required finding only another 20bhp. Well, almost. V600 20 years ago stood for real brake horsepower, of course, these days “600” represents PS or DIN hp, so we are being short-changed a little; the new car’s actual power is 592bhp.
Will it matter? Of course not. There’s no performance data as yet but for what it will cost – a great deal more than the £138,000 of the standard old Vantage V12 coupe we would guess – it will have to do better than 3.9 seconds to 62 and 205mph.
A fitting last-hurrah to a distinguished (and still wonderful) old soldier? Absolutely.