Aston Martin Vantage (2006) Fast Fleet test – living with a £30k V8 Aston

Rituals. Eight months in, they seem an important part of owning a car like the V8 Vantage. Checking the oil, for example, isn’t just a matter of tugging out a dipstick. The Aston’s dry sump system requires you to run the engine for 20 seconds at 2000rpm from cold, turn off and wait for another 30 seconds before unscrewing the alloy cap from the reservoir at the front of the engine compartment and checking the level.

If you didn’t love the car, it would seem like a complete faff. To me, it’s just one of the many things that make the Aston special. (For the record, it does appear to have used a little oil in around 2500 miles, though certainly not enough to warrant buying a litre of Mobil 1.)

> Aston Martin V8 Vantage (2005 - 2017) – Aston’s ‘baby’ aimed squarely at the Porsche 911

That knurled cap itself is another thing I love about the Aston. It has a cool, weighty, engineered feel to it – one that’s echoed in the part-aluminium fuel filler cap. And, indeed, in pretty much every aspect of how this car feels and drives.

More rituals: when heading off for a drive, I always drop the driver’s side window an inch or two, all the better to savour the brassy bellow as the V8 fires up. Then the first few miles are all about gently warming everything through. The gearshift, with its remote linkage to the rear transaxle, is notoriously obstructive when cold, especially from first into second, but once up to temperature it all feels a little easier. Even then, the shift remains weighty – as do the clutch and the steering – but that’s integral to the character of the car. It’s also a tangible connection with Astons of old, which always had this feeling of heft to them. Warming it up properly before cracking the throttles open and letting the V8 sing through its higher register just feels right.

And after a long journey, when the wheels are coated with brake dust and the nose splattered with bugs, I can’t bear to leave it more than a day or two before giving it a wash and leather. Followed by a quick blast on my local road loop to chase the last droplets out and dry the brakes. Rituals…

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There have been a handful of longer trips in this, my first spring, summer and autumn with the Aston. In September and October they included a couple of visits to Goodwood, for the Revival and Members Meeting. On both occasions the Aston was an absolute joy – both to travel in and to arrive. At the latter event, parking up next to an F355 and exchanging appreciative nods with the owner, I felt myself almost bursting with pride.

On both of these 260-mile round-trips the Aston returned a touch over 20mpg on a mix of roads and behaved impeccably. In fact it has all year, and that’s despite standing outside in all weathers (our garage was long ago sacrificed to the needs of a growing family). Although, now that the days are increasingly dank and dark, I’m feeling a growing urge to wrap it up and protect it. As I write, I’m torn between keeping the Aston on the road through the winter and locking it away somewhere dry and secure until the end of Feb. Thing is, I’d miss those rituals…

This story was first featured in evo issue 293.