SA Road Tests

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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.

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*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the stories.

 

We rub shoulders with the well-heeled in Aston Martin country

Pics by the author

Published in The Witness Motoring on Wednesday March 18, 2009

Power, beauty and soul

The plaque on the driver’s side doorsill says it all: “Made by hand in England.” Cynics will snort, but in certain places the tradition of the old English craftsman lives on, epitomising all that is excellent in car building. Add to this, management by a team of dyed-in-the-wool motorheads and you have a combination that is hard to beat.

Familiar to most is the present “Bond” car, the 6-litre, 380 kW V12 Aston Martin DBS. This is a tuned and lightened version of the DB9 that uses the same basic engine and is possibly the nicest in terms of overall balance of handling, aesthetics and performance. The “baby” of the range is the 4,7 litre V8 Vantage, no slouch in its own right and the one whose styling harks back closest to the DB5 that made Bond gadgetry famous.

Your scribe recently attended a dealer presentation near Durban to introduce Aston Martin’s range of cars to invited guests.

Nic Naylor, sales manager of Aston Martin South Africa, told us that the company has sold about a dozen units in KZN over the past year, thirty-odd in the Cape and the balance of the year’s total of 113 units in Gauteng. To give an idea of present demand, we were told that stock is sold out until July 2009.

Aston Martin is keen to open a showroom in the Durban area as soon as fiduciary considerations permit, because potential buyers quite naturally like to see where their pride and joy will be serviced. Plans have been put on the back burner for a while, however, owing to the present economic uncertainty and the fact that building a showroom to the parent company’s exacting standards is not a project approached lightly or inexpensively. Pressed for an answer, Naylor said: “Hopefully some time next year.”

As to the cars, they share certain characteristics. First, seating is for two. Rear “seats”, on those that have them, and available only as a R100 000 option on the DBS, are fundamentally for parking luggage. Naylor summed it up like this: “If you really want me to push the seat forward this far and be really uncomfortable, I suppose you could squeeze a small person in there.”

Second, you don’t just sit in an Aston Martin; you wear it. Like authority. Third, they go and handle very quickly and most reassuringly. There is no sloppiness anywhere. These are drivers’ cars, made for eating up transcontinental kilometers rapidly and safely. Fourth, quality is evident in every fitting, every panel and every stitch in the leather.

Fifth, they are unashamedly crafted with care for a favoured few - not for the hoi polloi, then.

As this was not a factory launch and certainly not a full road test, the driving experiences were limited to quick blasts down the coast road from Zimbali to Umhlali and back; just enough to whet the appetite and leave one lusting for more.

I elected to start with the smallest and work my way up. The Vantage V8 coupè was fitted with the optional sport shift 6-speed semi-automatic gearbox that adds R 70 000 to its basic price of R 1.85 million. Next up was the DB9 coupè at R 2,65 million and then the DBS 6-speed manual at R3,6 million.

They were all brilliant but my personal favourite (naturally) was the DBS manual. An optional 6-speed Touchtronic automatic ‘box adds R 100 000 to its price. The first thing that struck me about this stick shifter was that its clutch is not for delicate feminine legs, but then we hairy-hided chauvinists need something to call our own, don’t we?

Finally, as every predatory woman knows, the throaty rumble of a great V8 may make boys’ pulses race, but the indescribable primal symphony of an Aston Martin V12 is the raunchiest man-magnet of all.

 

Aston Martin's 4.7 litre V8 Vantage coupè is no slouch

 The DB9 is possibly the most nicely balanced in the range

 The clutch in the Aston Martin DBS manual is not for sissies

 Inside the Vantage cabriolet

What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.

What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.

Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax. 

So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!

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