News Source:  motortrend.com

It's like watching in-car footage from Le Mans. From the Jaguar's seat, the pavement darts left and right up the hill. Small, decisive turns on the suede cloth-trimmed steering wheel line up the apexes, and the glory of that supercharged 5.0-liter V-8 plays after each one. There's a faint V-12 howl, too. Through the rearview mirror, the massive wing has the Aston Martin perfectly framed. You see traces of the GT3 race car in the nose: the black lipstick around the grille, the brake-cooling ducts peeking out of the lower fascia. It's bearing down, quick. The proximity is appropriate. Even aside from the motorsport-inspired design and hardware (both have carbon-ceramic brakes, adjustable dampers, and Pirelli P Zero Corsas), the similarities between these two run deep. The factories responsible are 37 miles from one another; it's easy to imagine the engineering groups meeting for warm beer -- or tea. Further, Ian Callum and Henrik Fisker are credited with designing the 2004 Aston Martin DB9, which wrote the design language the company has employed ever since. Callum later went on to design the XK; Fisker, the Vantage.
And, my, what cars they've become. The XKR-S GT looks like a GT3 race car lost from a track, with its massive wing and dive planes and spats and splitter -- good for 320 pounds of downforce at 186 mph. It makes no more power than the XKR-S on which it's based; the extra $42,000 it costs accounts for the aerodynamic flair, carbon-ceramic brakes, a new hood, and substantial chassis improvements -- an F-Type steering rack, wider front track, increased camber, revised bushings, height-adjustable dampers, and massively stiffened spring rates. It's exclusive, too, with just 25 examples bound for the U.S.Sans all the flicks, scoops, and ailerons, the V12 Vantage S remains anything but subtle. It might be the Yellow Tang paint (yes, it's actually called that) or, more likely, what that V12 badge means: There's one that displaces 5.9 liters and makes 565 hp under the hood. The S designation means it's more powerful and lighter than the V12 Vantage it replaces. In fact, Aston claims it's the company's fastest series-production car.