Aston Martin undoubtedly make cars that stir emotion by virtue of their evocative design and soundtrack. The problem is, there are only two engines and essentially only two cars, namely a V8, a V12 and the Vantage or the DB9 and its derivatives. Aston Martin seem to be fast becoming a universal anomaly as an entity wherein change isn’t the only constant and we’re sorry to say, but all of us at SA Car Fan are beginning to tire of it.
Just 18 months after the arrival of the Aston Martin Virage, the British sports car manufacturer has decided to call it quits for the insignificant middle child of its GT range. Grrrr… honestly, Aston Martin, you could quite literally drive a motoring man to drink with the things you do sometimes! Almost a year ago I was sat down in the Aston Martin showroom in Sandton being guaranteed by a slick salesman how amazing and perfect the Virage was in every way and how it so perfectly completed the Aston Martin range.
“Really”, I thought to myself? I didn’t have the heart to tell the salesman that it kind of looked identical to all the other cars they make. It made the same sound as well and, as good as that sound was, it was still the same sound. It also had the same interior, the same automatic gearbox (just tweaked), the same V12 thirst and the same chassis as any Aston Martin that had come before it.
Where the Virage did excel however, was in the little improvements that had been made to it over a standard DB9. The adaptive suspension, the extra grippy front-end and the adjustable traction control system. These are all bare minimum requirements needed for architecture that’s nearly a decade old, but they were each good enough to make you notice and enjoy them in harmony with the achingly pretty body.
I was almost fooled by the whole spiel, the whole ‘filler between the arthritic DB9 and movie star DBS’ sob story. I was almost fooled, but I wasn’t. As cars get more modern and advanced, it gets increasingly more difficult to cover up the grey of an ageing product. No car proves this point more than an Aston Martin. Aston Martin only built 1 000 Virages over 18 months. Reports say that the Virage is going to be dropped in favour of a new, more powerful DB9.
Well, what does that mean? Don’t forget that this is Aston Martin so we can expect ‘new’ to not mean new at all. The new DB9 will apparently be more aggressively styled compared to the Virage and sport a bit more power, but not enough to threaten the Vanquish, (our Ed. attended the Cape Town launch). So the DB9 will be in exactly the same position as the Virage then.
So just to recap, Aston Martin made a car ten years ago called the DB9, now you can only buy two rather than three versions of it, the Vanquish (the old DBS) or the DB9 (the old Virage). Honestly Aston Martin, you should just stick to what you’re good at, making GT cars that look amazing and sound even better.
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