Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 12 i Vantage

IT WAS THE STUFF of Boys’ Own stories. In 1949, eric thompson drove his own hRG in the first post-war running of the Le Mans 24 hours and won his class in what was only his second-ever start in a motor race. thompson, who died on august 22, aged 95, generally tended to dismiss his track success as having been one long lucky streak. Nevertheless, he was good enough to be selected as a works aston Martin driver. what’s more, he remained a team member from 1950 until 1954. Growing up in Cobham, surrey, he often visited nearby Brooklands. his first track outing was in the ’48 Paris 12 hours at Montlhéry where he finished fourth in class. after almost retiring at the end of the following year, he received…

Unspoilt. It’s a word used promiscuously by travel magazines, but here it seems somehow apposite. As black clouds roll overhead, the scenic locale takes a turn for the brooding. The Burton Dassett Hills Country Park is mercifully free of hectoring commuters and trigger-happy safety cameras, a fact that positively encourages you to daydream. The view ahead across the acreage of bonnet conjures images that are more… Portuguese, perhaps. Suddenly, you’re not dodging stray sheep in the Warwickshire countryside. Instead, you’re chasing a Mercury Cougar along the Estrada do Guincho at dusk in pursuit of a beautiful noblewoman. It’s hard not to romanticise when driving an Aston Martin DBS Vantage, not least when it’s resplendent in this particular olive hue. The point isn’t lost on the car’s owner, Graeme Ford. Effortlessly…

THE TIME has long since passed when you could separate James Bond and Aston martin. Sure, other brands have bought their sprinkle of Fleming fairydust, large cheques exchanged for supplying 007’s company wheels, but nothing feels or looks so right as the world’s most famous secret agent behind the wheel of an Aston. This was confirmed to me a few years back at an early screening of Skyfall, when the entire audience spontaneously cheered as the DB5 made its first appearance. Cars shouldn’t have that effect on cinema-goers, but Bond’s car, or more specifically, Bond’s Aston, is different. Every other automotive brand would kill for that kind of kudos, but it undoubtedly comes with its own issues. Chief among them is how to outshine a 50-year-old icon that’s cooler than…

THE FACT THAT YOU’RE reading this magazine suggests that you have a) impeccable taste, and b) more than a passing interest in Aston Martin and its products. You may already be an owner – or perhaps you’re considering your first Aston purchase, in which case the following may be of particular interest. It won’t have escaped your attention that there are plenty of companies specialising in what can be termed the ‘classic’ Astons. We’ve featured many of these organisations in these very pages over the past three years. The cars they deal in, and the services they provide, tend to be geared to enthusiasts with extremely deep pockets. And that’s not a criticism; it’s the way of the modern Aston world. Fortunately there are enough of those enthusiasts to go…

CONSIDER THIS: Aston Martin’s new track-use-only Vulcan hypercar is more powerful and has more sophisticated aerodynamics than any of the company’s current works race-cars. Which means, of course, that it’s faster than them, too. Something else to consider: anyone can buy one, regardless of experience or skill (assuming they have £1.8 million to spare and that all 24 haven’t already been sold). This is quite something. You could buy a Vulcan and by the summer of 2016 be using every bit of its 800-plus bhp on any track you choose to. Which is why Vulcan ownership comes complete with a training and support programme. That programme starts in earnest next year at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi, but autumn 2015 saw a taster session at the legendarily fast…

AS WE CLOSE FOR press, the final round of the World Endurance Championship is but a few days away. For Aston Martin Racing the 6 Hours of Bahrain will see the chequered flag fall on a forgettable season that began promisingly but was stymied by a frustrating drop-off in pace and a string of disappointing results. Much of the frustration has centred upon the GTE PRO cars, for it is they that are most affected by the vagaries of the WEC’s Balance of Performance (BoP). This attempts to equalise the performance of the GTE category’s three main protagonists – Aston’s frontengined V8 Vantage, Ferrari’s midengined 458 and Porsche’s rearengined 991 RSR – via a range of engine restrictions, plus varying weight, fuel capacity and ride height limits. As you can…

IT’S BEEN a particularly special year for the aston martin owners club with a series of nationwide celebrations to mark its 80th anniversary. the formation of the club was the idea of the late mortimer ‘mort’ morris-Goodall and several other aston-owning friends. the inaugural meeting was held on may 25, 1935 at the Grafton hotel, tottenham court road, london. around 30 people attended the meeting and the club was officially formed. its activities were suspended after the outbreak of the second world war, but restarted in march 1948 and, of course, have continued ever since. The club’s present aims enshrine the same principles as those drafted by mort and friends in 1935, to ‘promote the sport and pastime of motoring’, ‘develop interest in the aston martin car’ and ‘encourage social…

email us eds@vantagemag.co.uk write to us Vantage Magazine, 5 tower Court, irchester road, wollaston, northants nn29 7PJ Pass master We’d first driven the Alps in 2013 in our V8 Vantage S and really enjoyed the experience. So we decided to return in 2015, but this time in a convertible. we looked at other marques, but decided to stay with Aston Martin as so much of our social life revolves around AMOC and Aston. Our options were Vantage roadster, DB9 Volante or Vanquish Volante. As we already had the Vantage we wanted something as different as possible and more of a Grand tourer, and although the DB9 is a lovely car, the Vanquish was the obvious choice. So back in May 2015 we decided to order a new Vanquish Volante –…

It’s raining in the Scottish glen: a thin, persistent drizzle that is so fine it has breached the high-tech defences of our waterproofs and is soaking our skin, apparently by osmosis. The surrounding mountains are shrouded in mist, and there’s an oppressive sense of foreboding in this still, silent valley. It is the kind of place that makes you yearn for a warm pub and a roaring fire. Yet we couldn’t be happier, for we are on the Aston Martin equivalent of hallowed ground. Here, on this exact spot, James Bond and ‘M’ stood beside a Silver Birch DB5, en route to Bond’s ancestral family home, Skyfall, in the eponymous movie of 2012. And, like Craig and Dench, we have a Silver Birch DB5 for company. Not just any DB5,…

Oh to have been a fly on the wall in the Aston design studio when Sam Mendes, director of Spectre, pointed to a very early concept and said: ‘That’s the car I want in the movie!’ Imagine the forced smiles and nervous laughter as Aston’s design and engineering bigwigs said ‘No problem at all, Mr Mendes’, before breaking out in a cold sweat as the scale of what they’d agreed to began to sink in. Then again, such challenges go with the territory when you’re the go-to guys for James Bond’s company car. Working closely with Mendes, Marek Reichman’s design team immediately put their minds to the task of developing and refining the concept into a fully formed piece of work. Then it was the turn of David King’s aptly…

When we land in Los Angeles it’s Saturday afternoon and we’ve been awake for 24 hours. Our legs are cramped, our stomachs heavy with airline food, our arms aching with the weight of camera gear and our eyelids barely open – but we’re here! And there’s an Aston Martin waiting for us. We’ve a number of things planned for our visit, but stage one is to sample El Mirage, the six-mile-long dry lake area roughly halfway between LA and Vegas, on the edge of the sprawling Mojave Desert. For some, this is a place to ride quad bikes or dune buggies. For others it’s for mountain biking. There are even those who land their planes and gliders here. But all this is inconsequential of course, because we know El Mirage…

It is often the case that short scenes or briefly glimpsed characters can create British cinematic history. Christopher Lee has only a limited amount of screen time in Dracula and although Desmond Llewelyn appeared in only one sequence in Goldfinger it was sufficient to change the course of the 007 series. By the time Q had exclaimed ‘I never joke about my work, 007!’ the actor had created a genuine filmic icon. Q was named in honour of the armaments expert Geoffrey Boothroyd, who so disapproved of 007’s choice of weapon in Casino Royale (the novel) that he wrote to Ian Fleming complaining that ‘a man in James Bond’s position would never consider using a .25 Beretta. It’s really a lady’s gun – and not a very nice lady at…

ASTON MARTIN has followed Ferrari’s lead by launching its own certification scheme for classic models. Assured Provenance is modelled substantially on Ferrari’s hugely successful ‘Classiche’ programme, but it’s also a response to the huge increases in values of many models, particularly from the David Brown era, and the desire of some owners and buyers for an official stamp of authenticity. The scheme will be administered by Aston Martin Works at newport Pagnell, where the assessments will take place. Every component will be examined for originality, though modifications made in period by Aston Martin will not disqualify a car from certification. The findings will then be presented to a newly formed sanctioning committee comprising experts from Works and the wider Aston Martin world. Cars will be graded in four bands, from…

AS EVER, THE HEIGHT of summer was followed by a calendar at its most packed. The remarkable and theatrical Goodwood Revival is now a firm favourite and the history of Aston Martin at Goodwood includes a string of strong showings in this superb event. That tradition was upheld in fine style once again. The Friday evening Freddie March Trophy race is a homage to the Goodwood 9 hours in which Astons enjoyed great success in period, and this year the marque was well represented by DB3S/115, driven by David Bennett; Mark Midgley in DB3/6, which finished 12th, and Steve Boultbee Brooks in DB3S/104, which was 8th overall. Best performance, though, was by Wolfgang Friedrichs and Simon Hadfield in DB3S/105, which came home an impressive 4th overall with 51 laps to…

THE WORLD’S auction rooms have not been short of Aston Martins in the past three months; indeed, as we go to press silverstone Auctions has just hammered the fifth of five Astons offered at the NeC Classic Motor show sale. (we very much liked the look of a low-mileage 1970 dBs V8, sound but improvable in Cotswold Beige Metallic, and fairly bought at £84,375 including buyer’s premium.) But the eyes of most AM aficionados have been fixed on two cars in particular, the first of which was almost an afterthought at h&h’s 14 october sale. that the sotheby special was somewhat overshadowed was understandable: ‘1960s Ferraris left to royal National lifeboat Association raise £9 million’ is a better headline than ‘obscure glassfibrebodied Aston Martin in terrible shape sells for modest…

It’s a scene that could have come straight from the imagination of Ian Fleming himself. Drive to a secure testing facility located less than an hour from the centre of London, then park next to a large and sinister concrete hangar and await further instructions. Without warning, the steel doors of the building rise to reveal the shadowy profile of an Aston Martin. Driver unseen, its engine starts, breaking the silence and filling the building with a resonant, rasping exhaust note. Slowly a silver DB5 emerges into the sunlight, bright flashes of light glinting from the chrome bumpers and wire wheels as it draws alongside us, its straight-six engine sending plumes of vapour and rich exhaust fumes into the clear morning air. If that all sounds a bit melodramatic, this…

An hour or two in this place at night and the mind starts to play tricks. It doesn’t take much of a stretch to imagine the agents of SPECTRE lurking in the shadows. Even a visit to the gents gains a certain frisson… So you move warily through the deserted basement cafeteria, senses heightened, fingers forming the approximation of a Walther PPK as you make your way to a rendezvous with fellow MI6 agent Shanks… Armitage Shanks. Now, don’t let your guard drop. Best, perhaps, to kick open the door to each cubicle in turn, just in case one of Blofeld’s minions is lurking within. You scan the room for something, anything, that could be used as a weapon, if need be. That soap dispenser, perhaps, could be pulled from…

YOU CAN’T make a Bond film without including at least one car chase. It’s the law. And while some Bond films are more equal than others in this respect, no-one could feel poorly served by the latest offering, Spectre, which features not one but two thoroughly satisfying vehicular pursuits. True, the second of these involves baddie Mr Hinx, who is in a Range Rover Sport SVR, being harried by Bond in a Britten-Norman Islander aircraft (pub trivia fact: if you holiday in the Scilly Isles and take the Skybus from Land’s End, you may end up flying in the actual aircraft, G-BUBP, that was piloted by Daniel Craig – it was painted black for the movie and given a fake registration). But back to the car chases… The first is…

SO, WHAT AM I DRIVING? Aston Martin made a model called Le Mans from 1933, but this isn’t one of those. Yet its chassis number is LM3. Or is it? The brass plate under the bonnet says the chassis number is 129R, the engine number too. Yet the engine itself bears an LM3/2 stamp. Curiouser and curiouser. Anyway, it looks older than a Le Mans. And so it should, because this car was built in 1929. An International, then? Or the preceding Sports Model? No, it’s not quite the same as either of those. Aston historians view this car as the missing link between them. The late 1920s and early 1930s were a confusing time for Aston Martin nomenclature, not least because production volumes were as low as the rate…