Blog: My Week As An Aston Martin Owner

About a week ago my office phone rang, with caller ID telling me that someone from Aston Martin was on the other end; I love calls like that. As it turned out, Aston PR had a V8 Vantage just lying around and wanted to know if I would have any use for the sultry coupe over the course of a week. As you might guess, it took me about four milliseconds to say, “yes.”

Considering that the Vantage isn’t a particularly new model, I thought it would be interesting to test the car in a slightly different format than we usually do at Winding Road. We’re told that quite a few Vantage owners use the car as a daily driver, so I thought it would be interesting to employ the car in just that way. So, for the next seven days, I’m going to do my best impression of an AM owner; at least where driving duties are concerned.

So far (the car was delivered to our office this morning) I’ve put about 15 miles on the clock; running to pick up some lunch, and stopping by the store for Halloween candy. It’s already clear that I’m a bit bigger than James Bond must be—my six-foot five-inch frame is well squeezed in the V8’s cabin, but I do fit. I can also attest that, in lunchtime traffic, a) the Vantage motor sounds simply incredible, even at slow speeds, b) the Sportshift automated manual gearbox is nowhere near as smooth as a traditional autobox at low speeds.

Much more to come, certainly. I’ll drop a few more blogs here on WR.com over the next few days, as well as a wrap piece when I’m through with the car. In the meantime, check out my Twitter feed (@Seyth), and the Winding Road Facebook page for lots of little updates, photos, etc.