Don't Stop Me Now

Aston Martin DB9

For some time now I’ve been a worried man. It was obvious from the photographs that Aston Martin’s new DB9 would be pretty, but would it be the epitome of Britishness? Would it be a steel-and-wooden fist in a leather glove? Would it be an Aston Martin?

The evidence didn’t look good. The factory these days looks like a UN convention. It’s owned by the Americans, the chief stylist is Danish, there’s a Japanese peacekeeper, a token woman, and the big cheese is a German doctor called Ulrich Bez.

He popped round for coffee this morning to try to allay my fears but, to begin with, he did no such thing. For half an hour he talked in microscopic detail about how the car is built. I learned how everything, from the firewall backwards, is glued together using a Norwegian system, and how the front is held on with bolts. I learned about the composition of every single panel, and I thought, oh no. I’m going to be here until I die.

He wasn’t finished. For the next half-hour I had a lecture on the gearbox. Unlike the ‘Wankwish’ – that’s what he calls the Vanquish – the paddles behind the steering wheel operate an automatic box rather than a manual. This is better, he says, because with the Wankwish system you have to concentrate all the time on changing gear. If you do not, the gearbox breaks.

Then we got to the engine, and I needed more coffee to stay awake. It is the same 6-litre V12 that you get in the Wankwish, but the UN delegation from Botswana has fiddled with the on-board computer to make it a little more relaxed. Naturally, Bez gave me chapter and verse on all the hows and whys.

This is the problem with the Germans. They like to analyse, with flip charts, every single detail of every single part of the car. That’s fine, but there is a downside, which is plain for all to see on the new 6-series BMW. It’s as boring as hell.

Advertising men will tell you that when it comes to cars they need to attach a single word to the brand. So if you want a ‘safe’ car, you buy a Volvo. If you want a ‘reliable’ car, you buy a Volkswagen. And if you have a small ‘penis’, you buy a BMW.

It’s not just brands, either. There are single words that describe the national characteristics of a car, too. A German car is ‘engineered’. A French car is ‘soft’ and an Italian car is ‘exuberant’.

I’ve always felt that a British car is ‘traditional’. We, as a nation, don’t like change. When the submarine was invented, for instance, the navy top brass dismissed it as ‘underhand and ungentlemanly’, and we see the same sort of thing with our cars. They all hark back to the Blower Bentley, which set the scene by being big, heavy, powerful and green.

Everything from the Bristol to the Allegro Vanden Plas and from the old Aston Vantage to the Jaguar XJ6 looked like a Spitfire from the outside and a Harvester pub on the inside. Lots of dark colours, lots of heavy wood and very little natural light. Given half a chance, the British car designer would fit an open fire instead of a heater, and some horse brasses.

‘Pah,’ said Bez. ‘Of course tourists still come here to see the Queen and the changing of the guard, but the country has changed. You’ve got the London Symphony Orchestra and Gieves & Hawkes. What they are doing now is not what they were doing 10 years ago.’

He says that the tradition in Britain is for discipline. ‘You can see this with your armed forces’ – he’d know – ‘but discipline isn’t enough now. Look at your football team. You can discipline them all you like, but you need creativity and flair as well. That’s what David Beckham brings.’ Again, after the 5–1 drubbing, he’d know about that, too.

But still I was alarmed. Because he was arguing that the DB9 should be like Tate Modern, which I think is as British as a coffee shop in Zurich. Pale woods, neat design and zinc are European, which is fine if you’re making furniture, but it’s not British. It’s not spotted dick and big thick custard. It’s not the library at Blenheim Palace. Heavy, dark, and a bit damp.

Eventually we ended the discussion and I was taken outside to see the car. It’s not as pretty or as dainty as the old DB7, but even so it’s still agonisingly, knee-tremblingly good-looking. Let me put it this way. The DB7 was like Liz Hurley. Classically good-looking in a feminine sort of way. The DB9 is more like George Clooney.

Then I opened the door, and relief washed over me like waves on a Caribbean shore. The dash, the carpets and the seats were finished in what can only be described as placenta red. It didn’t go at all with the wood and the metal. Joy of joys. It was still like a pub in there, and not an airport departure lounge.

Better still, the controls for the electric seats look like I’d made them, and the power-steering pump juddered as I turned the wheel. Bez had a terribly British excuse for this. ‘Oh, they all do that,’ he said. But he said it in such a way that I suspect the man responsible has been shot.

He also suggested that there will be no judder on the cars people actually buy, and he pointed out that you don’t have to have an interior the colour of an afterbirth.

So I turned the key, pressed the starter, pushed a button to engage drive, set off, and on the first corner knew, with absolute certainty, I was in an Aston.

When you turn the wheel in a Ferrari it communicates with the front tyres using telepathy. The whole car lets you know that it could flow from bend to bend whether you were there or not. In the DB9, however, you are made to feel like part of the equation. You have to manhandle the nose into the apex, so when you kiss it perfectly, and you will, because this car handles like a dream, you feel like it was all down to you. That makes you feel good.

Coming out of the corner you floor the throttle and the exhaust makes a perfectly judged snarl as 450 bhp hits the gearbox, which is mounted at the back for better weight distribution. It’s not so loud that it’s wearing, but not so quiet that you think you’ve bought a washing machine by mistake.

The ride also strikes a perfect balance.

A 20-year-old would say it’s too soft. A 70-year-old would say it’s too hard. But for the fortysomethings who’ll actually buy the thing, it steers a Radio 2 course right down the middle.

You can feel, when you push, the outside rear wheel scrabbling for grip – you really can feel it through your trousers – but when you fly over a crest on a British B-road, the nose does not smash into the tarmac with a sickening thud.

And boy oh boy, is it fast. The figures say it will go from 0 to 60 in 4.9 seconds and on to a top speed of 186 mph, but actually, as you snarl and roar through the countryside, it feels even faster than that.

Once, I was given the controls of a World War Two P-51 fighter. That thing danced and jinked like no machine I’d ever been in, and all the time there was a glorious roar from the Merlin engine. Well, that’s what the DB9 feels like. Like a fighter. Like everything mankind knows about excitement and machinery and technology has finally come together in an orgasm of absolute, thrilling and total harmony.

And yet. Inside, you have a Volvo satellite navigation system that works, you have a stereo system which looks and sounds as good as anything from Quad, and you have space to move too. The back’s a bit cramped, even if you’re Douglas Bader, but the front is massive.

So Bez – may God smile on him and all his family – has done it. He’s kept the traditional qualities of a British car, but blended them with German engineering, to create a party in the park. An old-fashioned setting, but a whole new sound.

As a result he’s ended up with a car for which only one word will do. If you want a ‘fast’ car, buy a Ferrari. If you want a ‘Volkswagen’, buy a Bentley Continental GT.

If you want a ‘perfect’ car, you simply have to have a DB9.

Sunday 18 April 2004

Don’t Stop Me Now