Luxury Cars Anna: Aston Martin V12 Vantage 2011

This car, like the magnificent DBS, and like the Vantage V8 (read our review here), has scribblers everywhere wetting themselves in torrents of superlatives. And Clarkson? He who can curl his lip at a Ferrari as if it's a mouldy custard tart – “It's superb,” quoth he.

It is superb, a fantastic car: fantastic to look at and fantastic to drive. It is also, for most of us, simply the stuff of fantasy. The V12, north of $400,000 by the time you get it on the road, is in such rarified air that only the very lucky, the very successful or the exceedingly well-born need apply.