Table of contents for Issue 19 in Vantage

POWERED EXCLUSIVELY since launch by Aston Martin’s in-house-developed 5.2-litre twin-turbo V12, the DB11 is now also available with a 4-litre twin-turbo V8. First fruit of Aston’s relationship with technical partner and minority shareholder Mercedes-AMG, the new engine promises exceptional performance combined with impressive fuel efficiency. It also offers significant benefits in markets where car taxation policy is structured around engine capacity, such as China. Producing 503bhp and 498lb ft, the downsized V8 remains formidable, propelling the DB11 to 62mph in a claimed 4sec and on to a top speed of 187mph. Official CO2 emissions are 230g/km and the EU Combined fuel figure is 28.5mpg. The engine supply deal allows Aston Martin freedom to put its own stamp on the character of the engine, which means new ECU software together with…

AS SUMMER FINALLY WARMED UP, so did the racing. AMOC’s long-running Intermarque series has seen increasingly rapid action, with German machinery often to the fore, but at Snetterton the thundering AM V8 of Watts and Giordanelli gave valiant chase to finish 5th. Meanwhile, the oldest car in the race, Martin Melling’s lightweight DB4, was right on the modern cars’ pace, finishing 9th with Alan Minshaw sharing the helm. On the same grid, the GT4 Challenge featured no fewer than six sublime Aston GT4s. The always-quick Chris Kemp was third overall, but behind him was a very close scrap between the GT4 of Robert and David Tinn, pipping by less than half a second the similar car of Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer and chief engineer Matt Becker. At least one…

SO ANOTHER MONTEREY CAR WEEK has come and gone, new auction records have been set, and much ink has again been spilled by observers attempting to divine the implications for the wider old car world of the latest mega-money sales. At this point, however, the Monterey auctions are almost meaningless to all but the auction houses and the wealthiest collectors – fabulous, compelling, noisy, but ultimately irrelevant. Values of the ‘ultra-exclusive’ cars that are Monterey’s calling card have advanced to the point that Monterey sets the market for ‘ordinary’ classics in the same way that the sale of a Turner sets the market for the paintings of a working seaside watercolourist; it doesn’t. Away from California’s Central Coast and back in the real world, there are several seriously covetable ‘ordinary’…

The hunter and the hunted ‘For me the “real” Le Mans is the road section as the cars leave Mulsanne Corner towards Indianapolis,’ says Nick Dungan. ‘I waited for this shot for maybe 30mins, watching the #97 Aston hunting down the Ford. Having #95 and the Beechdean car in the background was a bonus.’ 500mm, ISO100, f5.6, 1/400th Meeting the fans ‘The parade through town is one of the season’s unique photo opps. The fans line the road and the drivers soon abandon their vintage cars to take selfies and get involved. The atmosphere is great, a real highlight of the week.’ 50mm, ISO100, f1.4, 1/400th There’s something ironic about how the very best Le Mans 24 Hour races always come down to a bare-knuckle fight in the last few…

‘The Vantage wears its years well. The shape is still stunning, its compactness still surprising’ ROAD V8 VANTAGE AMR All good things must come to an end. Even things as good as the Aston Martin Vantage. Of course there’s a new one waiting in the wings, but the first Gaydon-era Vantage has been with us so long that when it finally ceases production (soon) it will be like saying farewell to a much-loved friend. The twilight years of a car’s life can often be undignified as marketing teams struggle to inject fresh appeal into an all-too familiar offering. The Vantage has had its fair share of special editions, but its core appeal has always remained strong enough to see it through. If anything, the old-school attributes that had begun to…

FOR A LITTLE WHILE it felt like we’d be writing about limited-edition Vantages forever, didn’t it? An extra few horsepower here, some stickers there, maybe a sprinkling of extra carbonfibre or a titanium exhaust… But now? Now it’s hard to keep up with everything that’s going on. New factories, new architectures, new engines, new everything. I’m glad to report that some things stay very much the same, though. Take the arrangements for my frankly scarcely believable chance to drive the new Vulcan AMR Pro just 48 hours before it makes its global debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. There’s no fanfare, no ceremony. Just a text message: ‘Be there for 1pm. Should be fun.’ If this were a German manufacturer, I’d have to register online, highlight any dietary requirements…

If you could examine the DNA of any of the new breed of AMR-branded Aston Martins in this issue of Vantage, I reckon you’d find traces of the car you see here embedded deep within them. In the late 1950s and early ’60s, the DB4 GT was the link between Aston’s road and competition cars; it set the mould for what we call the ‘gentleman’s racer’, and this car, Design Project 199, was the very first built. Just as with today’s AMR-branded Astons, it even has a racing stripe of its own, in this case that of a Swiss racing team. For unlike today’s AMR models, DP199 was a genuine race-car, winning first time out in the hands of Stirling Moss and even appearing at Le Mans in Aston Martin’s…

FOUR ASTON MARTIN ZAGATOS. Let’s just pause for a moment and allow that to sink in. Four Zagatos. What began with a striking and discreetly introduced Zagato version of the Vanquish S coupé has escalated into an unprecedented and quite remarkable quartet of Vanquishbased Zagato designs. The coupé and Volante follow a familiar recipe, and are no less desirable for that. However, the newly announced Speedster and Shooting Brake editions are major surprises and utterly spectacular. As all will share the same 595bhp V12 underpinnings of the regular Vanquish S (with fine-tuning to the damping to suit each car’s character), they promise to be as fabulous to drive as they are to look at. Pricing is at the ‘if you have to ask...’ level, but reckon on around £600,000 plus…

A WONDERFUL SUMMER of social events and exhilarating racing has been enjoyed by members of the Aston Martin Owners Club, capped by a memorable trip to Le Mans in June, including a chance to join the traditional parade of cars through the centre of Arnage. There was also a special lunch gathering at the Hotel de France in La Chartre-sur-le-Loir to mark the 70th anniversary of David Brown buying Lagonda to merge with his recently purchased Aston Martin marque. Brown’s team manager, John Wyer, made the hotel famous by using it as the base for the Le Mans team from 1953 to 1963, and 100 club members enjoyed a convivial champagne reception and lunch, having taken over the town square with a varied assortment of Astons. Maitland Cook gave an…

Can it be a decade since the first-generation Vanquish ceased production? Seems hard to believe, if you ask me. Still, if it is true, that makes it 16 years since a small band of motoring writers (myself included) were invited to Newport Pagnell for a deliciously low-key introduction to Aston Martin’s all-new flagship. Vanquish was significant for all kinds of reasons. Though we didn’t know it back in the summer of 2001, it would be the last new model produced at the Tickford Street factory. It would also be something of an engineering cul-de-sac, thanks to the clever and more costeffective modular VH platform that would soon shape Aston’s future at Gaydon. However, in that moment, all I knew was this: standing in the quaint confines of Aston’s pre-facelift Works…

Nine hundred and fifty five thousand pounds. Plus local taxes. Can a Vantage really be worth that much? Attempting to rationalise the value of exotic cars has always been something of a fool’s errand, but it’s impossible to approach the AMR Pro without weighing up its colossal asking price against the fact that it’s based on the evergreen V8 Vantage. And ten times the price of the V8 Vantage AMR edition we’ve just stepped out of. The Vantage AMR Pro is the pinnacle of the Vantage range. Built by Q Advanced Operations (the same in-house department that built the Vulcan, among other ultra-low-volume, ultrahigh- value projects), it’s heavily inspired by Aston Martin Racing’s Le Mans-winning Vantage GTE and provides a graphic demonstration of what constitutes the upper tier of Aston…

On the first pass, I miss the turning. I’m on a quiet country lane in north Hampshire, looking for an even quieter country lane leading off it, and there are no signposts. When I do eventually find the turning, it leads to what looks at first like a farmyard, but then you swing left and a line of Astons, glinting in mid-summer sunshine, tell you you’ve arrived. Step out of the car and the noisiest thing is the bleating of sheep in the fields. It’s an unlikely first impression for a vibrant, up-and-coming Aston Martin specialist, but I get the feeling this is the way Chicane founder and managing director John Watson prefers it. ‘We like to think we’re a little bit under-the-radar,’ he says. John’s not your typical MD,…

Engineering is in John Watson’s blood. When he was growing up, not far from Chicane’s north Hampshire base, he was exposed to classic machinery from an early age, thanks to his father, who was heavily into veteran cars. ‘When you saw those cars idling, it was like everything’s alive – the headlights wobbling, pushrods moving up and down,’ John recalls. ‘And I always enjoyed playing around with cars and bikes – at the age of 12 or 13, me and my brother were riding Honda C90s around my parents’ garden, and if they broke down we’d pull them apart on the driveway. That – and watching my dad with his cars – was where my love of vehicles and engineering started.’ His main interest as a teenager, though, was sport.…

WE STILL DON’T KNOW much about the nuts and bolts, but Aston Martin has shared some tantalising new images of the Valkyrie hypercar. The shots are of the latest development buck, which features opening doors and a full interior mock-up. Though not the finished item, it’s said to be 95 per cent there, at least so far as the exterior styling is concerned. As expected, the uncompromising genius of Red Bull’s Adrian Newey is evident in the radical sculpting of the Valkyrie’s underbody aerodynamics. Never has anyone attempted to channel air so aggressively or harness it so completely in a road car application. Consequently, the upper surfaces of the Valkyrie remain blissfully free from clutter. The cockpit sits between two enormous venturis feeding the rear diffuser. It’s hard to believe…

AFTER THE EUPHORIA AND delayed fatigue of Le Mans (see page 32), Aston Martin Racing had a scant few weeks to regroup at its Banbury HQ before loading the trucks and heading to Germany for the Six Hours of Nürburgring. Traditionally the last of the World Endurance Championship’s European rounds, Nürburgring brings the first half of a long season to a close. It’s also the perfect opportunity to enter the championship’s summer break with a positive result and momentum to carry into the gruelling succession of ‘flyaway’ races that start with the Six Hours of Mexico in the middle of September. Having taken a dramatic win in the GTE Pro category at Le Mans, Darren Turner, Jonny Adam and Daniel Serra must have been hoping they could steer their #97…

THE TERM ‘LIVING IN A BUBBLE’ seems appropriate to describe the vast, weeklong range of events that takes place on California’s Monterey peninsular every August. Aside from the multiple rallies, shows and concours of varying seriousness are more auctions that would appear feasible or indeed viable. This year there were six auctions of note and the big houses were all in town. Star of the Gooding & Co sale was a stunningly well-restored 1954 Bertone DB2/4 convertible that made $1.1m all-in – possibly the most ever paid for a roadgoing DB2/4, though this is an exceptionally rare and elegant car. All eyes, though, were on RM Sotheby’s, who boasted a truly breathtaking array of Astons, including no fewer than six with Le Mans history. For three days a steady stream…

email us eds@vantagemag.co.uk write to us Vantage Magazine, Dennis Publishing, Bedford Technology Park, Thurleigh, Bedford, MK44 2YA The Towns connection I really enjoyed your article on Aston Martin designer William Towns (Summer 2017). During my early years as a panel-beater at Aston Martin in Newport Pagnell, I worked on the wedge-shaped Lagonda myself. These days I work at Aston restoration specialists Bodylines and I’m the proud owner of an Interstyl Hustler, which, as some of your readers will know, was also designed by Towns. It was while on holiday on the east coast of Scotland that I first encountered a Hustler. I was buying an ice cream from a pint-sized, six-wheeled ice cream van and asked the man what kind of vehicle it was. ‘You know the Lagonda?’ he said.…

‘I was spending every spare hour running a just-in-time parts operation for the smallest race team in the motorsport world’ I’m often asked: What’s the most surreal thing you’ve done with Aston Martin? Standing at the top of the Alexandra Palace course, looking down at 22,000 cheering fans and preparing to launch our mini V8 Vantage GTE, I knew this was it. After months of planning and a down-to-the-wire build, Aston Martin’s first ever Red Bull soapbox run was actually happening. Working in the company’s PR team, I tend to find myself dreaming of the next big thing we can do and, after watching repeats of the worldfamous Red Bull Soapbox event over Christmas, it struck me how cool it would be to see a miniature version of our Le…

‘ZAGATO ASTONS HAVE THIS ABILITY TO TURN THE EVERYDAY INTO THE EXOTIC’ WAITING AT THE traffic lights, facing west, it feels as though the whole expanse of Brighton’s famous front is stretched out in front of us. It’s dark and the Palace Pier is a riot of flashing lights that tells of candy floss, cuddly toys and screams of delight, as if the city has leaked this one branch of joyous light out into the inky sea. Viewed from a distance, detached from the details, it could be any number of UK resorts. A traditional evening seaside scene. Very British. Inside the car, the lighting is more subdued, just the pale, icy glow of the dash. Through the windscreen, red is joined by amber before both are replaced by green.…

Six days, four countries, 2300 miles. IT’S MY FIRST DATE WITH THIS CAR and it’s certainly no brief encounter. This is a serious commitment: to drive from the UK to Villa d’Este on Lake Como and home again. Imagine a week of speed-dating with the same date; forty hours in the hot seat. Will it be a love match or a test of endurance? We’ve all heard the cliché about a car being ‘perfect for the continental tour’. The truth is, covering thousands of miles in any car can prove a disappointment, either for the driver or the passengers, or sometimes both. Something about the car will reveal itself to be less than ideal. It may be that the seats cause actual pain, or that the exhaust has a wearing…