Bond Baby

A FEW YEARS back, January 2001 to be exact, I was slumming it in a beachside hotel in LA chatting to the Ian Callum, the former head of design at Aston Martin. We were sitting in the bar of Shutters Hotel and being California I wasn’t allowed to smoke.

So I popped outside the main entrance to get my fix, something I still haven’t quite managed to knock on head. While I puffed away I was thinking about what Ian had just told me. Not only were Aston about to launch a successor to the hugely successful DB7 with the DB9 but there was even talk of a ‘baby Aston’.

And just as I was picturing myself in black tie behind the wheel of my baby Aston, a fairly modest looking black Lincoln Town Car pulled up and out popped Pierce Brosnan. There I was thinking about BEING James bond and THE James Bond wanders out in front of me. It was fate. I was meant to buy an Aston. The god’s had clearly sent me a message.

Six years on and I have finally got my hands on the baby Aston. Unfortunately, with prices starting at £83,000 my dreams of actually owning an Aston will have to remain just that.
Some laughed at the thought of the baby Aston, even saying it would cheapen the brand. They were all wrong. I’ve driven the V8s boss the DB9 and I’m not kidding when I tell you that for pure thrills the V8 wins hands down.

Think of the V8 Vantage as a kind of poor man’s DB9 without the tiny back seats, less cylinders and power to make the car ‘affordable’. For all the speed and power the DB9 is a GT, a Grand Tourer, designed to swallow up hundreds of miles across Europe with the minimum of fuss and effort. And the DB9 achieves its aims like few, if any other car.

The Vantage, by contrast, has no interest in such a cosy existence. It is a hard-driving, no-nonsense sports car. It doesn’t apologise for being a true driver’s car and is all the better for it.

Aston’s have never struggled for straight line speed but when compared to the leaner, more driver-focused sportsters such as the Porsche 911 or Ferrari F430, they have failed to even compete.