Wednesday, 15 July 2026. Welcome back to another instalment of Cardle of the Day, the series where we work through each morning’s puzzle at Cardle and then spend a little time with whatever car the game has decided to celebrate or torture us with that day. Today was another good day.
For anyone new here: Cardle is a daily guessing game built around a single photograph of a car. Each round gives you up to five clues, each one a progressively less cropped version of the same image. You can guess at any point or skip a clue to reveal a little more of the picture. The earlier you identify the car, the better your score. And today, embarrassingly, I needed all five hints.
Today’s gauntlet started, as it so often does, with a crop so tight it could have been anything. The bonnet showed a vent, but that was all. The second clue showed a wheel, that even for a wheel nut like myself, felt too generic. It was only by clue three that I knew what it was (or did I?), and I tried the Aston V8 Vantage, one of my favourite cars in the whole world.
But it was not that. The game played its cards very well, and it was only after the last crop showed the licence plate, and then the penny dropped: of course, those vents are there to help the extra 4 cylinders breathe: this was the Aston Martin V12 Vantage.
Twelve Cylinders and a Point to Prove
The V12 Vantage arrived in 2009 as something of an act of defiance. Aston Martin took the compact Vantage body, already the smallest car in their lineup (and I stand by it: one of their best resolved designs ever) and shoehorned in the 6.0-litre V12 engine from the DBS. The result was a car that produced around 510 bhp in its later S specification, weighed under 1,700 kg. Yes, please.
It was, in the most straightforward sense, a sports car built around an engine. The original V12 Vantage was produced in limited numbers, with the roadster variant capped at 101 units globally. A second generation followed in 2022, this time using a twin-turbocharged 5.2-litre V12 producing 690 bhp, a significant step up in outright performance while retaining the same basic philosophy of maximum engine in minimum car.
Why don’t I have one?
The V12 Vantage has never been the most practical Aston Martin, nor the most refined, nor the easiest to justify on a spreadsheet. What it offers instead is something harder to quantify: a sense that the people who built it were genuinely enjoying themselves. You could even say it was partly a halo project to mark Aston Martin’s centenary year.
What can I say, I’m happy to see strong Aston Martin representation in recent Cardles, especially when it comes down to a car that is this special to me. Maybe people are catching up to this slept on model, which means I should make a move. See you tomorrow!
