Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 5 i Aston Martin Driver

WHEN MY friends and family learnt that I was taking over the reins of Aston Martin Driver last summer, without exception they all said the same two things – can I take them for a drive and aren’t Astons really expensive? My replies to both were always the same; only if they were nice to me and not as much as they’d think. There’s no doubt Aston Martins can be pricey – there isn’t a current model that starts at under £100,000 – while some classic examples, such as the famous DB5, are £750k and above. But there are also more affordable models, three of which we have in this issue. It will come as no surprise to many of you that DB7 3.2s start at around £20k. Old-fashioned even…

Team TF Sport drivers, Ben Keating and Marco Sørensen, were crowned drivers’ champions after finishing fourth in the tense finale. Following a season-long rivalry with fellow Vantage racers, NorthWest AMR, Keating and Sørensen – who were partnered by Henrique Chaves in Bahrain – eventually triumphed by 23 points. Keating and Sørensen began the 8 Hours of Bahrain with a 20-point advantage over NorthWest AMR’s trio of Paul Dalla Lana, two-time WEC champion Nicki Thiim and David Pittard, with just 39 points available. Keating qualified second in class and ran a punishing triple-stint at the start of the race, meaning he achieved his minimum drive time at the earliest opportunity and provided the team with the most flexible strategy for the remainder of the race, which finished in darkness. This proved…

PRINT EDITION 6 ISSUES FOR JUST £27.00 HOW TO BUY YOUR SUBSCRIPTION OFFER 1. DIGITAL EDITION: shop.kelsey.co.uk/AMD OFFER 2. PRINT EDITION: COMPLETE THE ORDER FORM BELOW We may wish to contact you regarding our special offers that we believe would be of relevance to you. Please tick the boxes to tell us all the ways you would prefer to hear from us □ Email □ Post □ Phone □ Text Message. We will not pass your details onto third party companies. BEST UK DEAL SAVE 25% □ I WISH TO SUBSCRIBE BY DIRECT DEBIT PAYMENTS OF £27.00 EVERY 12 MONTHS Your subscription will then continue at this low cost every year. Instructions to your Bank or Building Society to pay by Direct Debit PAY BY CHEQUE / DEBIT / CREDIT…

WE’RE ALWAYS looking for cool things to do and we had a little used One-77 prototype in storage that we couldn’t sell, and we thought it would be good to do something with it,” explains Simon Lane, former director of Q and Special Project Sales for Aston Martin Lagonda. The decision was made to make something to celebrate the V8 Vantage as well as the DBS V8 that was developed to race at the 1977 Le Mans 24 Hours as the RHAM/1. Some initial design work was done, Miles Nurnberger, director of design, said, “We don’t usually do retrospective design at Aston Martin, but it’s good to exercise designers’ minds and this was a fun project.” That Le Mans race car, built by Robin Hamilton back in the Seventies, with…

The strictly limited-edition AMB 001 Pro is the latest design collaboration between the two brands, pairing Aston Martin’s legendary design with state-of-the-art Brough Superior motorcycle engineering. Offered in a single Pro specification, the successor to the sold-out AMB 001 was inspired by Aston Martin’s track hypercar, the Valkyrie AMR Pro. Like its inspiration, AMB 001 Pro takes track performance to the extreme, offering a 25 percent power increase on its predecessor, with its 225 HP producing a power-to-weight ratio of 1.28 hp/kg, similar to that of a Formula One car. Thierry Henriette, chief executive officer of Brough Superior, said, “We are excited to reveal the AMB 001 Pro. The success of its predecessor, coupled with the incredible Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR Pro, inspired us to get together again to create…

THE DIFFICULTY in life is the choice,” said the Irish novelist, George A. Moore, once. He had a point. From choosing what flavour of ice cream to buy to which TV channel to watch, from where to go on holiday to whether or not we should put the heating on, we spend much of our lives making decisions. If you have between £25k to £45k to spend on an Aston Martin, then you have one more to make, since the first generation of V8 Vantage and DB9 are now worth roughly the same price. Although one is a V8-engined sports car and the other more of a V12 grand tourer, they’re both good-looking, fast and highly desirable machines, making choosing between them more difficult than between Rocky Road and Mint…

THE FRIENDS and family of the now HM King Charles III must have found it difficult to buy him birthday presents when he was still the Prince of Wales. What do you get the heir to the throne who has literally everything, including the Duchy of Cornwall’s 135,000 acres, several significant London properties and even the Isles of Scilly? While others no doubt settle on new socks, a novelty tie or perhaps a WHSmith gift voucher, when Charles visited Bahrain at around the same time as his 38th birthday in November 1986, the country’s Emir, Isa bin Salman Al-Khalifa, offered to buy him a new Aston Martin. His Royal Highness was no stranger to the brand, having owned a DB6 Volante in Seychelles Blue (registration EBY776J) since 1969. A 21st…

AS TWO-door, four-seat coupes that arrived at roughly the same time in the mid-Nineties, the Aston Martin DB7 and BMW 840Ci have, on paper at least, much in common. But with one exhibiting futuristic styling and powered by a modern V8, while the other being more traditional-looking, that’s also based on a much older car that has origins with another manufacturer, they have more differences than they do similarities. To discover which we prefer out of innovation or convention, we’re comparing a 1997 example of both. BMW 840Ci 4.4 Despite arguably looking and feeling more modern than the Aston Martin DB7, the BMW arrived first, debuting at the 1989 Frankfurt Motor Show before going on sale the following year. By being more powerful and more expensive, it wasn’t a direct…

WHEN I ask Antony Forshaw if he feels any pressure about being the third generation to be in charge of his family business, Aston Service Dorset, he tells me no. “I could never let it close,” he says. “I’m proud of our heritage but also what it is now.” Started over 70 years ago by his grandfather, Ivan Forshaw, and later run by his father and uncle, the company remains well known with Aston Martin enthusiasts both in this country and internationally for its unique history in caring for the marque and huge selection of new and used parts. Ivan Forshaw was a self-taught engineer and first began working with Lagondas in 1934. As one of the founders of the Lagonda Owners’ Club, he soon became the spare parts registrar…

The collaboration between Aston Martin and Japanese concierge leader, VIBROA, commences with the design and construction of 001 Minami Aoyama, a stunning private home in the highly desirable Omotesando area of Minami Aoyama, renowned as one of Tokyo’s foremost architectural and style centres. Working with a local architect, the exterior design of the home – which features an automotive gallery, wine cellar, home cinema, gym, and private spa – was led by Aston Martin’s designers, who are also responsible for the interior styling of the property and carefully selected furniture. The four-storey home, complete with roof terrace and stunning views of Tokyo, is already sold to a private buyer and is scheduled for completion in November 2023. It is Aston Martin’s first real estate design collaboration in Asia, and follows…

TOGETHER WITH the Porsche 911’s distinctive profile and the Austin Allegro’s famously square steering wheel, the Aston Martin grille is one of the most famous and identifiable shapes in automotive design. Seventy-five years after the definitive outline was introduced on a road car, it now defines the models that feature it and the company that makes them. Yet it didn’t happen overnight, taking almost a decade of refinement and evolution before it finally became the shape we know today. By arriving just before Aston’s most influential and iconic series of cars, the first road model to feature the grille – the DB Mk III from 1957 – has never truly received the recognition or place in the company’s history it so clearly deserves. The now familiar grille design has its…

AS I floor the pedal hard, the action resulting in a strong, sudden and violent burst of speed, I have an immediate sense of what (Sir) Stirling Moss, Roy Salvadori and many other legendary Aston Martin drivers must have experienced during the Fifties. But it’s not just the speed or handling that’s causing this – as a replica of an Aston Martin DBR2, those aspects of the car are a given – but by the distinctive aroma coming into the cockpit. Although I’ve never driven a genuine DBR2 before, I have driven other Fifties racing cars including a Jaguar C- and D-type and they both had the same unique smell of burnt oil and petrol as this one, making it more than anything, feel like it’s the real thing. The…

AFTER DOMINATING the sport throughout the 2010s, much was promised when it was announced that former Red Bull and Ferrari driver, Sebastian Vettel, had signed for the newly named Aston Martin F1 team for the 2021 season. Although results have been hard to come by over the last two years, the German driver has still made a sizeable impact on the burgeoning team, scoring the majority of its points in that time. Vettel’s place in F1 was all but guaranteed when the then 17-year-old dominantly secured the 2004 Formula BMW Championship by winning 18 of the season’s 20 races. Following a subsequent test for the Williams and Sauber Grand Prix teams, he became the latter’s test driver for 2007, making his race debut at Indianapolis the same year when his…