Being Bond

AV12 is rarer than an honest politician. A V12 with two turbochargers breathing on it? Hold on tight!

- Sirish Chandran & Adam Towler

BOND. BEAUTIFUL CARS. SPECTACULAR women. Guns. Toys. Legs. Villains in lairs across high mountain passes. Continent-crushing power. Mad money. To my mind, and I suspect yours too, it’s everything that Aston Martin stands for. Tragedy too. Bond’s ladies rarely last till the credits. And neither did Aston Martin. Well, almost. As I was taken round the factory I lost count of the number of times the company downed shutters, the number of owners, the ebbs and flows and fits and starts. They’re not even sure who owned the company before David Brown bought it after WW2 and slapped his name on the badge as well as the nomenclature (DB, get it?). Yet, through it all, there’s been one constant. Cars, just like the women Bond chases, that are painfully gorgeous to look at. I mean the new Vantage, without a doubt, has the best arse in the business. The special-edition Zagatos — nobody makes a more stunning shooting brake and nobody does needles shooting out of the taillamps. The DB11 and that nose — it’s as iconic as anything in the automotive universe. And at the pinnacle of what Aston does today, at least until the Adrian Newey-designed Valkyrie screams to its 11,100rpm redline, sits this car; almost brutal, a thrusting British bulldog, a statement of power, dripping in details that scream money, a power plant that can pull down the mountain Bond’s nemesis is holed up on.