Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 21 i Vantage

LITERALLY MOMENTS BEFORE this edition of Vantage was dispatched to the printers, we received word from Aston Martin that it would be revealing a full-size mock-up of the Valkyrie AMR Pro on its Geneva show stand: one of two surprise unveilings, the other being the incredible Lagonda Vision Concept. News of the ultra-Valkyrie’s show debut was accompanied by the design rendering you can see above. We’ll be honest, there’s little more detail to add since we ran our first news story on the track-only evolution of the Valkyrie hypercar in the last issue. Nevertheless we felt the image was well worth sharing, for it confirms that despite the extreme nature of the road car, Adrian Newey has created something truly sensational in the AMR version. To recap, the AMR Pro…

IT’S ALL CHANGE for this year’s World endurance championship. the most significant difference is the adoption of a radical new calendar that has the le Mans 24 hours as its season finale. The mid-June date of the iconic endurance classic hasn’t changed, but everything else has been re-shuffled. the result is a one-off, transitional ‘super season’, commencing with the six hours of spa-Francorchamps in May 2018 and finishing in June 2019 at le Mans. The observant among you will notice that this means two visits to both spa and le Mans in one season. Wec’s organisers have also added sebring to the calendar for the first time since 2012, and shifted Silverstone’s traditional season-opening slot in April to August – the new first-round slot once the 2018/19 super season has…

Bond Case by Swaine Adeney Brigg From £2095 swaineadeneybrigg.com This is an exact replica of the case carried by 007 in From Russia With Love: handmade by Swaine Adeney Brigg of London; black bridle leather exterior; red skiver lining. Disappointingly, there are no gold sovereigns secreted in the base, but on balance it’s probably a good thing that the case is not offered with the modifications seen in the film. Very tricky to get through an airport these days with luggage containing an AR-7, throwing knife and tear gas. Tobias Rehberger Vantage GTE print by Racing Line Designs From £9.50 racinglinedesigns.co.uk How meta: one of the great modern ‘art cars’ becomes the subject of an artwork itself. This new print from Racing Line Designs features the #97 AMR Gulf Vantage…

If Lionel Martin were alive today and a copy of this esteemed magazine found its way to his desk, it’s quite likely that upon picking it up and flicking through the pages, the first article he would settle down to read would be this one. Why? Because there is a strong argument to be made that Mr Martin, eponymous founder of one of the world’s most loved and most recognisable car brands, actually preferred bicycles. Martin acquired his first bicycle (a present from his mother after he had helped her balance on her own two-wheeled steed) while he was at Eton. It was a Singer, a marque that would have a big impact on his life as it was his competitive success with his modified (four-wheeled) Singer 10 that would…

‘Few other experiences on four wheels can match a Volante in full flight’ The Volante has been a staple of the Aston Martin line-up pretty much ever since the name was first coined, back in 1965, and although some versions have been more successful – and arguably more beautiful – than others, the fundamental appeal of the open-top Aston has remained a constant for more than half a century. Fact is, there are few other experiences on four wheels that can match a Volante in full flight, hood down, exhaust note echoing off the scenery, and ideally somewhere like the south of France… Which was exactly where Aston Martin chose to introduce the all-new £159,900 DB11 Volante to the world’s press – and to universal acclaim, it has to be…

The man on the gate is unmoved. ‘Do you have an appointment? If not, I cannot let you enter.’ But we do have an appointment, we tell him: with history! This car, we explain, is the very car that won the 24-Hour race right here in 1948. If he’s impressed, he’s hiding it well. The gate remains closed. Fortunately for us, much of the old Spa-Francorchamps track was made up of public roads, still recognisable today – and no-one can stop us driving on those. So even if we can’t get access to the pits and such legendary turns as Eau Rouge, we can give this wonderful old Aston a fitting celebration drive on at least part of the circuit. Well, it would be wrong not to. The anniversary of…

SO THIS IS ASTON MARTIN’S PLAN for Lagonda. Remarkable, isn’t it? Like nothing you’ve ever seen before. It certainly knocked me for six when i had a sneak peek at the full-size styling ‘clay’ and a very basic interior buck in the Aston Martin Design studio at Gaydon a few weeks before the Vision Concept’s unveiling at the Geneva motor show. AMl’s ambition and intent for Lagonda is as breathtaking as the concept itself. Production of the first in a range of new Lagondas is due to start in 2021, though whether the first model will be a productionised version of the Vision Concept or something a little more conventional is unclear at this stage. What’s very clear is the aim of Lagonda being the first zero-emission luxury brand. As…

Lame duck ‘That the Cygnet is allowed to occupy the annals of Aston Martin history is surely now well-established,’ declared John Simister as he opened his article about the supercharged Toyota iQ with the Aston badge and grille (‘Earning its Wings’, issue 20). Well-established? Not even close! Has there ever been a more horrifically perfect example of the evils of badge engineering? It’s a good city car, but that’s utterly irrelevant. It takes much more than the Aston Martin badge, grille and lots of makeup to make an Aston Martin – if that’s all it takes, surely the whole point (and plot) would be lost. The vast majority of people I know in the Aston world were, are and always will be appalled by the Cygnet. The company (courtesy of…

Last summer, Aston Martin rekindled the Zagato flame once again for a run of 325 special cars comprising coupés, roadsters, speedsters and shooting brakes. Don’t bother rummaging down the back of the sofa: every last one of them is already sold. ‘One of the most enduring partnerships in the automotive industry,’ trumpeted the blurb, conveniently forgetting the Italian carrozzeria’s longer relationship with Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Lancia and the downright weird. For the fact is, through the prime years of the motor car, you'd not forget some of Zagato’s more outlandish offerings: cars that appeared to have been designed with a builder’s square and discarded Airfix kits of other cars; from the Volvo GTZ to the Lancia Flaminia Tubolare to the Shelby Zagato – and, indeed, Aston Martin's V8 Zagato. What…

The world’s lowest four-door estate car. That’s how its creator described it on completion of the four-year task of building it. That creator is Beat Roos, profiled elsewhere in this issue and something of a specialist in the estate management of Newport Pagnell’s products. This square-backed, practicality-enhanced ‘wedge’ Lagonda was Roos Engineering’s first shooting-brake conversion, preceding the two Virage-based cars we reported on in issue 18. So excited was its owner, who commissioned the re-make in September 1996, that he included Lagonda among the three names of his newborn daughter who herself arrived in October 1998. ‘It’s a car for her,’ he said. And the dog, but we’ll get to that. The idea of a racy-looking estate car has an appeal that far transcends utilitarian notions of carrying capacity or…

it’s customary for this page to celebrate a hero from Aston Martin’s long and storied past. Well, in this edition we’ve decided to champion a man who is very much part of the marque’s present: Aston Martin Racing’s longest-serving driver, Darren Turner. Turner has been a fixture at AMR since the team’s formation back in 2005. It’s a remarkable partnership, especially in a sport that’s known to be mercilessly cutthroat. It’s also testament to his undiminished pace that he remains one of the frontline drivers in the hugely competitive World Endurance Championship. And it’s a reflection of his loyalty that he has stayed put through the good times and the bad. Indeed it’s impossible to overstate the 43-year-old Brit’s contribution to Aston Martin Racing, for he has played in integral…

ASTON MARTIN DOESN’T exactly have a glittering track record in Formula 1, but it does have great ambitions at the highest level of motorsport. And those ambitions are slowly taking tangible form in the shape of an ever-closer partnership with Red Bull Racing. A technical partnership between the two is already bearing fruit in the form of the Valkyrie hypercar. And, for 2018, Aston Martin has become the title sponsor of the Red Bull F1 team. But in future years it may be far more than just the Aston name that features on the grid. Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer has gone on record as saying that Aston will ‘probably’ enter F1 as an engine supplier in 2021 – if proposals to reduce costs are adopted by the sport’s governing…

WE WOULDN’T WANT to be accused of burying the lede, so here it is: after many years at Aston Works, Bonhams’ annual Aston-only sale is moving for 2018 to Englefield House near Reading. Hang on; wrong Bonhams story. We are, of course, very much looking forward to said auction, scheduled for June 2 to coincide with the Concours d’Etat hosted by AMOC. But we are considerably more excited by the news that the lots at Bonhams’ Festival of Speed sale on July 13 will include 2 VeV, arguably the most covetable Aston racer in existence, inarguably the most storied, and expected to fetch in excess of $14.3 million – the price paid in 2015 for the last DB4 GT Zagato to be offered at auction. Unusually for a racing car…

As moments of jeopardy go, this one is right up there with the Italian Job cliffhanger. I’m peering out of an Aston Martin Vulcan on a cold, wet winter’s day. Lucky so-and-so, you’re no doubt thinking. Well yes, there are worse places to find yourself. Except that this is the world’s only road-legal Vulcan and I’m attempting to turn right out of a small side-road onto a busy A-road, threading the needle across a stream of fast-moving traffic. To make matters worse, there’s a slight incline and the sum total of my seat-time in this precious unicorn (insured for £2.2m) is the five minutes the engine has taken to warm up after the car was unloaded at our pre-arranged and, in hindsight, somewhat sub-optimal rendezvous point. Still, nothing for it…

‘IT WAS the second Zagato I’d owned. It was a sort of brave and quite extravagant project really, as confirmed by the very large invoices that I believe still accompany the car. ‘It was done in cahoots with Aston Martin Works Service and Kingsley Riding-Felce, who was in charge there at the time. We fancied the idea of building an Aston racer to go club racing. The class was for mildly modified cars – we were up against lightened V8 Astons mostly – and there was a minimum weight, so that became the target. We managed to get it down by about 200 kilos, as I recall. ‘The standard Zagato is already quite a bit lighter than the standard V8 Vantage, because it’s a shorter car and has quite a…

Detroit Auto Show, January 1998. The first industry showcase of the year, peddling automotive optimism even while attendees’ bodies are still processing their New Year hangovers. Ford’s giant presentation, in the theatrical Cobo Arena, includes a slot for its prestigious Premium Automotive Group brands: Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo, Aston Martin and, er, Lincoln. It’s Aston Martin’s turn, and Ford president Jac Nasser proudly reveals exactly what Aston-watchers have been fervently hoping he would reveal: the car that might move Aston Martin on from the V-car dinosaurs and the slightly crossbred DB7 to a pure-Aston future of insanely desirable machines of extraordinary beauty. Please meet, he offers, Project Vantage… And there it is, in a rich metallic green, the future made real if only the company can build a real one…

The term ‘landmark car’ is often over-used. But in the case of the mk1 Vanquish, it really does hold true. The last car to be built at Newport Pagnell (at least until the limited run of DB4 GTs began last year). The first to embrace new materials and new methods of construction (aluminium chassis, carbonfibre composites, etc). The car that established a new design language for a whole generation of Astons. Oh yes, and it just happens to be one of the finest driver’s cars of the last 20 years. That was especially true towards the end of its life. Elsewhere in this issue you can read about the Vanquish’s genesis in the form of the ‘Project Vantage’ concept of 1998. Here we’re taking a look at the other end…

ROOS ENGINEERING HAS HAD a number of incarnations over the years. One thread has been common to all, though, and still holds true today. If you’re in Switzerland, or in a large catchment area beyond the Swiss borders, Roos Engineering – one of Aston Martin’s 13 worldwide Heritage Specialists – is very likely your go-to emporium of Aston expertise. Nowadays it’s part of Emil Frey Classics, based in Safenwil, near Bern, which has a restoration and service workshop covering many types of classic cars – mostly British – along with a sales showroom and a museum that features the marques sold over the years by the Emil Frey group, one of the biggest motor-trade conglomerates in Switzerland and beyond. So, today, Roos Engineering occupies one section of the impressive and…