Shaken, Occasionally Stirred
Aston Martin has spent more than a century making cars that are as much about presence as performance. At its best, that means a V12, and the kind of car that makes an ordinary drive feel special. At its worst, it reflects a company that has spent much of its history short on money and changing hands. Both sides have produced memorable cars. Here are 10 Astons that delivered the full experience.
1. DB5
Goldfinger put a silver DB5 on screen in 1964 with revolving plates and a passenger seat that fired upward, and it has been the company's calling card ever since. Underneath the gadgets sat a 4.0-liter straight six and aluminum bodywork formed over a Superleggera frame. Just over a thousand were built, which is a large part of why one now costs about what a house does.
Alexandre Prévot from Nancy, France on Wikimedia
2. DB4 GT Zagato
Aston shipped chassis to Milan in 1960 so Ercole Spada could shorten the roof and take the weight out, and 19 cars came back. Zagato's version sits lower and looks meaner than anything Newport Pagnell was turning out on its own. Values have since climbed into eight figures.
3. DBR1
Carroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori shared the driving when the DBR1 won Le Mans outright in 1959, the same season Aston took the World Sportscar Championship. One of the five built sold through RM Sotheby's in 2017 for $22.55 million, a record for a British car at the time.
4. V8 Vantage
Aston claimed 170 mph for the 1977 V8 Vantage and called it Britain's first supercar, which the press mostly let slide. The blanked-off grille and the bonnet bulge made the argument before the engine got involved. Timothy Dalton drove the Volante version through a Czech checkpoint in The Living Daylights.
5. Vanquish
Ian Callum's Vanquish is the shape that set Aston's modern look, wrapped around a bonded aluminum tub and a 5.9-liter V12. Die Another Day handed it an invisibility cloak. It was the last car assembled at Newport Pagnell, which gives it a weight the spec sheet misses.
6. DBS V12
Casino Royale opens its best stunt by rolling a DBS seven times, a cannon-roll record when it was filmed. The road version paired that 5.9-liter V12 with carbon panels over an aluminum structure. It looks like a DB9 that spent a hard year in the gym.
Linus Egger from Munich, Germany on Wikimedia
7. One-77
Seventy-seven cars came out of the program, each carrying a 7.3-liter V12 of around 750 horsepower over a carbon monocoque. That engine is still the largest naturally aspirated V12 Aston has put in a road car. The price started well past a million pounds before anyone opened the options list.
8. V12 Vantage
Aston's engineers dropped the 5.9-liter V12 into the small Vantage body largely because somebody worked out that it fit. Management resisted and then gave in. What came out is short-geared and loud enough to set off parked car alarms.
9. Vulcan
Twenty-four Vulcans were built, none of them road legal, with a 7.0-liter V12 turned up past 800 horsepower. The price landed near two million pounds for a car you can only use on a circuit, and driver training came bundled in.
10. Valkyrie
Adrian Newey worked out the aerodynamics between Formula One seasons, and Cosworth built a 6.5-liter V12 that spins past 11,000 rpm. The cabin sits your feet above your hips the way a single-seater does. Nothing else wearing a license plate sounds remotely like it.
Now, here's 10 that landed like a bad sequel.
1. Lagonda
William Towns gave the Lagonda its razor-sharp wedge shape, while Aston packed the cabin with cathode-ray displays and touch-sensitive controls that were years ahead of their time. The electronics reportedly cost more to develop than the rest of the car and became notorious for unreliability. Aston built just 645 over fourteen years, and the complexity did little to help a company that was already struggling to turn a profit.
2. Bulldog
The Bulldog was supposed to be a 237 mph flagship with gullwing doors and five headlights hidden behind a flap. Aston built exactly one and ran it to 191 mph before shelving the project when the money dried up. A restored Bulldog finally cleared 205 mph in 2023, forty-four years behind schedule.
3. V8 Vantage Zagato
The second Aston and Zagato collaboration went nothing like the first. Clearing the carburetors required a bonnet blister that looks like somebody sat on the cake, and the styling divided opinion the moment the covers came off. All 52 coupes sold on deposit anyway, most of them sight unseen.
4. Virage
Roughly two tons of car and 330 horsepower from a 5.3-liter V8 is a ratio that flatters neither figure, and testers in 1989 found the Virage soft where a car at that price should have been sharp. The later Vantage version bolted on two superchargers and fixed most of the complaint.
Ben from Weert, Netherlands;cropped by uploader Mr.choppers on Wikimedia
5. DB7
The DB7 saved the company, and it did that sitting on a Jaguar XJS floorpan with a parts bin raided from Ford. Owners kept spotting switchgear they recognized from a Mondeo. It outsold every Aston before it, so the badge clearly did a lot of the work.
6. The Vanquish Gearbox
Aston's automated manual left a pause between gears long enough that owners learned to lift off the throttle to smooth it over. The company charged supercar money for the experience. Converting one to a proper manual is now a thriving corner of the aftermarket.
Charles from Port Chester, New York on Wikimedia
7. Rapide
Magna Steyr in Austria assembled the four-door Rapide until 2012, when Aston pulled production back to Gaydon with the sales numbers running under plan. The car drives well and looks like a DB9 stretched through the middle. Rear passengers get a roofline that assumes they have no heads.
8. Cygnet
EU fleet emission rules needed answering, so Aston wrapped a Toyota iQ in leather and asked roughly three times the price. The pitch was a city runabout for people who already owned something with a V12. The program lasted about three years.
9. Lagonda Taraf
Aston revived the Lagonda name in 2015 for a sedan sold by invitation at around £700,000, built on a DB9 architecture stretched past five meters. Sales landed in the low hundreds, mostly in the Middle East.
Edvvc from London, UK on Wikimedia
10. Rapide E
An all-electric Rapide was announced in 2019 with 155 cars planned and a battery developed with Williams Advanced Engineering. Prototypes ran and deposits came in before the project was shelved as Aston's finances turned. Buyers got their money back, and Aston kept a very expensive fleet of test mules.
