Aston Martin Rapide

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, appalling. Cars here are driven bumper-to-bumper, 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 massive strain on all the electrical items.’ Despite the Rapide being, at first glance, similar in appearance to the DB9, every single panel is designed differently 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.