Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 9 i Aston Martin Driver

THE TENS of thousands of spectators that lined the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps for this year’s Belgian Grand Prix probably took little notice of the car that Aston Martin F1 driver Fernando Alonso used for the pre-race driver parade. They were no doubt more interested in seeing the Spanish double world champion up close rather than his wheels. But there was at least one present who recognised the car; your’s truly. As the famed Spa Replica, it’s what the British pairing of St John ‘Jock’ Horsfall and Leslie Johnson used to win the gruelling 24-hour race with, at this very track, 75 years ago. As Aston Martin’s first major victory after the war, it helped to establish the company as a major force in international motorsport. Following Alonso’s incredible 2023 season…

Justin Pearce, general sales manager, said, “Pulling together this collection of our more recent rarities – including our first true hypercar – has been a long and careful labour of love, and I am thrilled that we have finally been able to unite these Aston Martins for what I believe to be is the first time in a sales context. “The phrase ‘spoilt for choice’ I think quite rightly springs to mind. I believe it is highly unlikely we will see this particular grouping of the marque’s modern classics together again in a showroom anywhere in the world anytime soon, and it seems to me only fitting that they are offered to the market at the historic home of the brand.” For more details about these cars’ availability and pricing,…

The first of three purpose-built buildings will house the team’s growing workforce, facilities, and ambitions. A separate wind tunnel is halfway through its build phase, while the original factory building – dating back to 1992 – will be soon replaced with a new facility. The headquarters cover a space of 37,000m2 (400,000sq ft) and is F1’s first totally new team base for almost two decades and will be home to over 700 staff members. When complete, the AMR Technology Campus will be the home to manufacturing within a single location for the first time in the history of the team’s operations at Silverstone. This first building, which has taken just over 24 months to complete, houses the team’s design office, engineering, production, commercial and manufacturing areas. To celebrate the opening…

THERE WAS no hiding it. For all its power and luxury, by the mid-Eighties the Aston Martin V8 Vantage was starting to show its age. Heavily based on the William Towns-designed DBS that first made its debut in 1967 and still powered by Tadek Marek’s 5.3-litre V8 that had arrived two years later, compared to newer, more modern performance cars such as the Ferrari F40 and Porsche 959, it made the Vantage an antiquated relic from another time. It didn’t help that due to several regulations during that time, the engine had lost considerable power while the car itself was suffering from middleaged spread. Together, the extra sound deadening, wood trim, extra leather upholstery and a more complicated cooling system had all impacted on the Vantage’s once impressive power-to-weight ratio.…

WHEN THE dated 2-Litre Sports was due for replacement towards the end of the Forties, the DB2 was the ideal candidate and arguably kept Aston Martin in the limelight during the Fifties, paving the way for a new design of sports car. Having competed as prototypes in the 1949 Le Mans 24 Hours and returning in 1950, DB2 production began in late 1950 with a two-door saloon, introducing a drophead coupe the year after. A total of 309 two-door saloons were produced up to 1953, along with 102 dropheads, all equipped with aluminium bodywork over a shortened 2-Litre Sports space frame chassis, except for five drophead coupes that were sent to Graber in Switzerland to be clothed in steel. The two-seat DB2 was replaced by the longer DB2/4, which was…

THIS IS where Napoleon started his comeback. On 1 March, 1815, having escaped from exile, Monsieur Bonaparte and 1,000 of his loyal soldiers disembarked at the port of Golfe-Juan on the French Riviera. They then marched north towards Paris: a 20-day journey that culminated in the Battle of Waterloo. Today, that long, arduous trek is commemorated by the Route Napoleon. Taking in parts of the N85, D1085, D4085 and D6085, it is one of Europe’s finest driving roads: a 200-mile ribbon of tarmac that weaves through the jagged foothills of the Alps, then onward to Grenoble. Unsurprisingly, it’s also a popular destination for car launches, used extensively by Ford – and now by Aston Martin for the global debut of the DB12. Napoleon’s comeback ultimately ended in defeat, of course,…

In celebration of its 110th anniversary, Aston Martin has revealed the Valour, a spectacular, ultra-exclusive V12-engined and manual transmission special edition, which was built to honour the marque’s long tradition of front-engined sports cars. Although physically influenced by the one-off Victor from 2020, while that had a 7.3-litre V12, the Valour opts for Aston’s 5.2-litre twin-turbo twelve-cylinder mounted in a bespoke version of the company’s bonded aluminium platform. In what Aston describes as a “mouthwatering, end-of-an-era specification”, it punches out 705bhp and 555lb ft of torque that’s sent to a bespoke, six-speed manual and mechanical limited-slip differential. The car also receives adjustable dampers and a new power steering set-up intended to provide more granular feedback through the wheel. Stopping power is provided by standard-fit carbon ceramic discs measuring 410x38mm with…

The North America-based squad dominated the race in the GTD Pro category with drivers Ross Gunn and Alex Riberas. Starting from pole, the duo led for 146 laps of the 168-lap race and set the fastest lap on their way to their first win of the season. “The Vantage was awesome in qualifying,” said Gunn, and I knew, if we carried that pace into the race we were going to be strong. I’m very happy for Heart of Racing and Aston Martin, and my team-mate Alex, and I know that we can win again this season if we can take this momentum on into Road America.” The Heart of Racing’s Roman De Angelis and Marco Sørensen also won the GTD class with another Vantage. It was achieved following a penalty…

ALTHOUGH CARS aren’t featured (wrongly in my view) on the popular TV show Antiques Roadshow, if they were, then like an old grandfather clock or set of war medals, this DB6 has everything needed to make the crowds gasp with amazement. Not only has it been owned by the same family since new (oooh!) but it’s also a rare and now valuable Vantage Volante (ahhh!). But in good Antiques Roadshow tradition, Adrian Davis, the son of the car’s first owner (who himself has owned it since the late Eighties), has no immediate plans to sell the convertible, hoping it will remain in the family. By all accounts, Adrian’s late father, Cyril Davis, was something of a car connoisseur, having previously owned a Railton, an Armstrong Siddeley and a Jaguar amongst…

All the models we’re covering in this buying guide feature a front suspension set up consisting of an axle with trailing arms, a single anti-roll bar, lever arm dampers and coil springs (the front axle also houses some steering components). Tim Stamper says that the front axle can leak where the lower trailing arm is connected to it (or it may be a leak from the lever arm damper). New lever arm dampers are not available, but Vintage and Classic Shock Absorbers says that the rears are much easier to recondition than the fronts and some are identical to the ones fitted to the Ford Pilot. Expect to pay upwards of £150 to have one overhauled. The front lever arm dampers take a greater load and VCSA has found that…

DUE TO being designed by the Scot, Ian Callum, and then being built at a small factory in Warwickshire, the DB7 is as Italian as a full English breakfast or queuing in the rain. But when the Milan-based design house Zagato transformed the model into a pair of handsome, limited-edition sports cars in the early 2000s, its personality changed from a warm pint of real ale into a glass of fizzy Prosecco. Although produced in relatively small numbers, by arriving towards the end of the DB7’s nine-year production run, the two cars represented a final flourish for this always popular model. It also set the standard for the company’s future models that were just around the corner. The origin of the two cars stems from a chance meeting between Andrea…

JUST AS the Zagato coupe and AR1 saw out production of the DB7 Vantage in the early 2000s, a series of four special editions, which were again designed by the Italian house, did the same for the second generation of Vanquish 15 years later. Based on the more powerful S version, they were also the last cars to use both Aston Martin’s VH chassis plus its 5.9-litre V12. The rarest and arguably more interesting of these Zagato-designed models was the Speedster that, similar to what AR1 had done for the DB7, transformed the Vanquish into more of a lighter, faster and driver-focused sports car. The series started in 2016 with the carbon fibre-bodied Zagato Concept that was based on the Vanquish S complete with the production car’s 595bhp version of…

The proposed agreement will see Lucid supply Aston Martin with electric vehicle technologies which will be central to the company’s all-new in-house Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) platform. This will then form the basis of the company’s entire future electrified model range; from hypercars to sports cars, GTs and SUVs, the first of which is targeted for launch in 2025. Lawrence Stroll, executive chairman of Aston Martin, said, “The supply agreement with Lucid is a game changer for the future EV-led growth of Aston Martin. Based on our strategy and requirements, we selected Lucid, gaining access to the industry’s highest performance and most innovative technologies for our future BEV products.”…

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WHETHER IT’S the sun rising in the morning or heavy rain on a bank holiday, there are some things that are inevitable. Another is the team behind Aston Martin Racing, Prodrive, developing a special version of the original V8 Vantage. With the company in charge of Aston Martin’s racing effort since 2004, there was little surprise when two years later the British motorsport specialist turned its attention to its road cars. Yet it wouldn’t be some marketingled limited edition featuring nothing more than some fancy colour schemes or a boot badge, but a fundamental upgrade of several major components resulting in an even more focused driver’s car than normal. The company now known as Prodrive was founded in 1983 by a former rally co-driver, David Richards, who in 1981 had…

IT DOESN’T take long in John McGurk’s company to learn of his refreshingly simple view of selling Aston Martins. “It’s about taking time with the best examples,” he tells me, “to make sure they’re right and that the customer is being properly looked after.” It’s this old-fashioned but effective approach why McGurk Performance Cars has become the country’s leading specialist in both sales and servicing of modern Aston Martins with customers now across the globe. John has been in the West Midlands motor trade for the majority of his working life, previously with TWR and then a Ferrari dealership where he bought and sold many Aston Martins. He decided to branch out on his own in the early 2000s, starting McGurk Performance Cars in 2002. “I’d always wanted to do…