Aston Martin's 100-year highlights

Which brings us to the present day and the new Vanquish, wearing its centenary paintwork and sterling silver badging. Sitting on the apron, it doesn’t look contrived, awkward or out of place. It can’t be easy with all those ancestors peering over its shoulders, but it seems comfortable in such illustrious company. And that’s the first test passed.

1935 Ulster

It may have been the pre-war cars that put Aston on the map but, on every level, these cars are quite unlike the others that followed. And not just because even quite a young one like this is homing in on its 80th birthday.

Early Astons were small, compact sports cars powered by single-cam, four-cylinder engines, usually of 1.5-litre capacity. For their speed, they relied not on brute force but light weight. An output of 80-85bhp was all you could expect from even the quickest – the ‘Ulster’ road-racing versions, of which this is one of just 20 built for private sale.

The Ulster would have been a 
wet dream to a schoolboy of a certain era, a car cut from the pages of 
Boy’s Own. It would have been driven by a dashing cove called Archie at improbable speed, accompanied by a girl of impossible beauty wearing a polka dot scarf, their destination invariably the slung-back canopy of his trusty Spit. Today, the airfield is all we can manage.

Even so, all you need to do is slot yourself behind that vast wheel to be transported back in time. Dials appear everywhere, in haphazard order. There’s a bank of switches that seems to go on forever. But to start it, you just flick down the first two to activate the magneto and fuel pump, retard the ignition with the big lever on the steering wheel, thumb the starter and, in an instant, it fires. It sounds coarse, but loud and full of purpose.

There are challenges everywhere. The gears have no synchromesh and are the wrong way around, so third and fourth lie to the left of first and second. It’s the same with the pedals: the brake is on the right and the accelerator in the middle – not a mistake you want to make.

And yet the Ulster is easier to drive than this suggests. The engine is docile, and although I’m sure that this race-prepped example would be safe to 6000rpm or more, even using a very defensive 4500rpm there’s more than enough torque to ensure unabated progress through the gears. As for the gearbox, as long as you’re prepared to move your hand and foot as fast as they’ll go, remembering to dip the clutch twice for each change and blipping the throttle for each downshift, it’ll swap gears quicker than any other car here, with the possible exception of the Vanquish.

That’s how the whole car feels: an exquisite jewel of precision engineering, utterly mechanical in its every action and far more precise in its handling and steering than its antediluvian appearance might suggest. Only the brakes feel their age, although I expect this car has race linings that require more heat than I could generate. That aside, 
the car is magical.

1958 DB2/4 MkIII

After the war, Aston Martin found itself with a decent chassis that would have been light years ahead of its time had it gone into production when it was designed, in 1939, but it had no compatible engine. Its new proprietor, David Brown, cracked this nut with the sledgehammer that was buying Lagonda outright, for whom none other than WO Bentley had just designed a 2.6-litre, twin-cam straight six motor. And so by marrying his chassis with Bentley’s engine, the DB2 was born in 1949. 

Over the next decade, the car was subjected to a process of continuous evolution, scoring a 3.0-litre version of the engine and the world’s first hatchback on the way. The engine had started life with 105bhp, but for the MkIII introduced in 1957, a choice of outputs was available all the way from 160bhp to 214bhp, more than double the original.

So although this actual car is a mere three years younger than the DB5, its engineering comes from another age entirely. Indeed, and despite all appearances to the contrary, its character is closer to 
that of the Ulster than to the DB5’s.

This is no grand tourer, designed for wafting along the Boulevard des Anglais. It is a blood and thunder sports car designed to thrill to the core. It’s a job that it does well. This car’s engine is in fine fettle and flings the Aston past 100mph on the shortest of straights, accompanied by a joyously loud and rude bark from those twin pipes. The gearshift is slow and somewhat agricultural, but at least the controls are around the right way. Even the brakes are good; this was the first Aston to have discs and they stop the car well.

But the MkIII’s magic is in its handling. It is designed to drift, drift and drift some more, and the only limit to your fun is the frankly rather lousy lock. It seems something of a liberty to hurl someone else’s valuable 54-year-old car into a wet curve on a trailing throttle and then stamp on the gas to break the back loose and power it through, but inside it feels like the most natural thing in the world. If you want your driving pleasure to be delivered with full opposite lock, it is the most fun car here. 

1963 DB5

I won’t be treating the DB5 like I did the MkIII. As previously mentioned, this is the Skyfall car and I’m told that the suggested insurance value for our day was £3 million.

I almost didn’t want to drive it. Road cars make for poor spectator sport, but the DB5 is an exception. 
Its beauty is transcendental and I 
was terrified of being disappointed by it. How can a car subjected to 
half a century of hype possibly live 
up to expectations? The DB5 is 
happy to show you.

It is so different from the MkIII that it is hard to know where to begin. On the most basic level, it has a Superleggera spaceframe construction, whereas the MkIII has a quite clever but still essentially ladder chassis with a body bolted on. The DB5’s engine is still a twin-cam straight six but is unrelated, designed by Tadek Marek, not WO Bentley. It also has five gears rather than four.

But it’s when you drive the DB5 that you realise that it’s more different even than this suggests. The interior is spacious and lavishly appointed, the engine smooth and quiet. And the ride is exceptional.

It also feels fast, even by modern standards. In the day, its 4.0-litre motor would have had about 285bhp. I don’t know what state of tune this car comes in, but it propels you forward on a surge of torque more like that of a modern Aston than its immediate forebear. The DB5 was said to be good for more than 140mph and this one feels like it would go straight there without delay.

But it is not a sports car and is actually the least involving of the four to drive. Instead, it is a long-distance tourer, the perfect device for a fortnight touring the most glamorous parts of Europe, still able to dismiss most modern traffic with a snort from its exhausts before delivering you to your destination without a hair out of place. If this is your idea of all an Aston should be, the DB5 is better even than you might imagine.

2013 Vanquish

Where, then, does this place the modern, flagship Aston? It is, of course, somewhat redundant to point out that, in terms of speed, grip and braking, it lives not so much in a different postcode as in another universe from the others, but so does the DB5 compared with the Ulster. This is about how these cars feel, about their character.