British International Motor Show - Aston Martin

Heaven forbid! A four-door Aston?
Sure is, and it's beating a furious path to showrooms.

Aston designers started doodling the Rapide late last year and managed to have the concept on display at January's Detroit show.

Now it's on show in the UK for the first time with the promise it'll roll out onto the roads in 2008. Rapide indeed.

You can't have a four-door Aston.
Why not? The company's had them before. Have you forgotten the 1927 Olympia show car? Or the Bertelli aluminium-bodied model that was unveiled four-years after that? And what about the Aston Lagonda of the 1970s?

Aston also points to its wealth of experience knocking together the odd bespoke four-door or made-to-measure estate for the ludicrously wealthy.

Either way, even though Aston hasn't made as many four-door cars as Ford (which owns Aston ), we think the Rapide is a successful and elegant design.

So is it as roomy as a Mondeo, then?
Aston says the Rapide provides 'sporty' accommodation for four. Try clambering into the car (which is unlikely, given that it's still just a fragile concept) and you'll discover this a flattering way of saying its quite tight inside.

There's certainly more space in the back than in a DB9 - enough, says Aston, to accommodate four people and their skis (or three with all of their golf clubs), but it's still a bit of a squeeze. A five-metre long, luxurious 480bhp squeeze no doubt, but still a squeeze.

So how many Mondeos will it cost?
It's unlikely to cost anything less than £150,000, so you could either have the Rapide or a fleet of about 10 new Mondeos. It's up to you.