STUTTGART – Aston Martin will begin building its four-door, four-seat Rapide coupe in the summer of 2007, suppliers say.

The quick launch will give the British sports car maker a two-year lead on Porsche in creating a new niche atop its lineup. Porsche’s Panamera four-door, four-seat coupe is expected in early 2010.

Aston Martin unveiled the Rapide as a concept car at the Detroit auto show last month. Aston Martin called it production-ready, but few expected it to arrive so quickly.

“Start of production of the Rapide is scheduled for August 2007 and customer deliveries will begin shortly after,” a supplier told Automotive News Europe.

A second supplier confirmed the start date.

The first source said Aston Martin is planning to build 3,000 to 3,500 Rapides a year. Porsche is planning at least 20,000 Panameras a year.

Porsche approved the Panamera project last July, but has just started its development.

“Porsche takes four years to make a new car, so the Panamera will be on the market no sooner than 2010,” the supplier said.

Last summer, Porsche had said the Panamera was coming in 2009.

The Rapide and Panamera have similar mechanical layouts – front longitudinally mounted engine driving the rear wheels – and bodies that are coupe-style four-doors.

But the two high-end models have radically different approaches to construction.

The Rapide has an all-aluminum structure, based on the Aston Martin VH (vertical-horizontal) architecture used on the DB9.

But the Porsche Panamera is expected to have a steel unibody, similar to the structure of the Porsche Cayenne and 911.

The Rapide’s 2990mm wheelbase is 220mm longer than the DB9 coupe and at 5000mm, it is 290mm longer than its sibling.

“Unlike the Maserati Quattroporte, which is a sedan, [the Rapide] is a four-door sports car,” Aston Martin CEO Ulrich Bez told ANE. “There is nothing else like it.”

– Wim Oude Weernink contributed

Aston Martin boss Ulrich Bez has confirmed the company's well-received Rapide concept will become a production reality. In an interview with the German based automotive industry magazine and AutoWeek sister publication, Automobilwoche, Bez signaled a decision to build the svelte four-door sedan had recently been taken by Aston Martin parent company, Ford, and that it would reach North American showrooms before the similarly conceived Porsche Panamera, which is due out in 2009.

"We're not taking any orders yet. But the car will be built," Bez said, adding, "The Rapide will reach the market before the Panamera." This leaves Aston Martin just two and half years to engineer and develop the new car, which will line up alongside the V8 Vantage, DB9 and a successor to today's Vanquish to provide the rejuvenated British sportscar maker with arguably its strongest model range ever.

The basis for the new front-engined sedan will be a modular aluminium structure similar to that employed on other Aston Martin models, with production set to take place at the company's Gaydon facility in England. Bez indicated the luxuriously equipped Rapide will sit at the very top of the Aston Martin stable, with production likely to range from 300 to 500 cars per year. Power for Aston Martin's new flagship is expected to come from a reworked version of the DB9's 5.9-liter V12 engine producing up to 500 hp.

It has now been two years since the Aston Martin Rapide concept car was first unveiled, and only this week has a near-production prototype of the production car finally been spotted. Two spy photos of unknown origin surfaced online yesterday, showing a test car that is not heavily camouflaged, but is clearly still a work in progress.

Given a strong interest in the Rapide, Aston Martin says it will build between 1000 and 2000 units per year, up from an original estimate of 500 or less. The car will be the second new model launched under Aston's new ownership, following the DBS coupe.

There were rumors recently the British supercar maker was considering taking production of the car outside of the U.K., but that remains purely speculation at this point in time.

Like Aston's other models, the Rapide is built on the company's VH (Vertical/Horizontal) architecture. Despite its sporty looks, it is roughly the size of a Mercedes S-Class.