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New Delhi: Aston Martins have for the longest been known for their stylish cars and licence to thrill. Associated with James Bond, it meant as supercars, it was a more popular brand across the world than Jaguars and even Ferraris. However, historically, it wasn’t the most profitable firm and racing in pre-sponsorship days did little for the brand’s accounts.
Changing ownerships through the decades, too, was doing little for them until Ford took over in 1987, and things started to look a little better. The Supercar Sunday I am going to write about today is the Aston Martin Volante, a car made when Ford was at the helm of both Jaguar and Aston Martin and what many consider as the first proper Aston Martin since the DB days. It is believed that it was designed at the office of Jaguar and included a lot of Ford elements.
The DB9 Volante came with a front-mid-mounted 5.9-litre V12 engine that made around 450-510 bhp depending on the year of manufacturing. The torque was around 600 Nm. It came with a rear-mounted Touchtronic ZF automatic gearbox with paddle shifters as standard and was made for smooth and responsive driving. You could choose automatic and manual style shifting.
To make the handling good, the DB9 Volante was a rear-wheel drive car. It went from 0-100 kph in 4.7 seconds and had a top speed of 300 kph. All of this meant it was competing with the likes of the Maserati GranTurismo Convertible and Ferrari 612 Scaglietti.
To understand the design, here’s a little history and parallel time, comparing and understanding how it happened. In July 2000, Ford appointed Ulrich Bez as CEO and chairman of Aston Martin. At the time, there were two major projects underway: the AM802, a 2+2 grand tourer to replace the DB7, and the AM305, a smaller two-seater designed to rival the Porsche 911 and Ferrari 360, which later became the V8 Vantage in 2005.
Ian Callum was initially the lead designer for the AM802 project, balancing his work between Jaguar and Aston Martin until Henrik Fisker took over in 2001. Callum had been thrust into the role for Aston Martin following Geof Lawson’s sudden death in 1999. Bez, though, asked Callum to just focus on Jaguar. In fact, a lot of the work had happened in the Jaguar design centre at Whitley.
Callum later stated he was responsible for nearly all aspects of the car’s design, excluding only the colour, trim, and wood finishes.
The Aston Martin DB9 Volante looked quite elegant, with a convertible soft top. It came with a classic low-slung GT convertible design and had a wide stance that was both elegant and aggressive. It featured Aston Martin’s “whale tail” at the back, along with an impressive front grille.
On the inside, it came with a 2+2 configuration of seating, with space for adults was basically at the front only, coming with a very comfortable driver’s seat. Throughout, it had luxury-appealing materials with hand-stitched leather and trim options that could be things like walnut or carbon fibre as well. It even came with an infotainment system and other modern-day luxuries.
What it did do as a car was restore the image of the Aston Martin and made way for all the cars that the car was going to bring in the future. In fact, the design of the Volante does seep into inspiring many modern offerings from the brand.
