The nine best Aston Martin road cars ever

Coal Scuttle – 1915

Coal Skuttle was the first car designed and built by Bamford and Martin Ltd., the company that went on to become Aston Martin. A two-seater sports car with the chassis number ‘A1’, the Coal Skuttle had a 1.4-litre four-cylinder engine, and, registered in 1915, it was the company’s sole creation until 1920, as World War I had got in the way somewhat.

It was last registered in 1928, and, sadly hasn’t been seen since. But its legacy is the thousands and thousands of cars that have followed in more than a century since. One of the best Aston Martins ever? Undoubtedly.

Aston Martin DB2 – 1950

As the name suggests the DB2 is one of the older Aston Martin road cars, and was in fact the first to carry the initials ‘DB’.

The two separate companies of Aston Martin and Lagonda were bought by engineer David Brown in February and September 1947 for £25,000 and £52,500 respectively (Brown acted after seeing an advert for the sale of a ‘high class motor business’ in The Times in 1946). The first car built under Brown’s ownership was the 2.0-litre Sports in 1948, retrospectively called the DB1, but it wasn’t until 1950 that the first DB-badged road car was born: the DB2

(the ‘2’ acknowledged the car’s number of seats). Where the 2.0-litre Sports used a lot of pre-war tech, the DB2 was fresher, making its worldwide debut at the 1950 New York Motor Show. Designed by Lagonda’s Frank Feeley, it had a 2.6-litre, straight-six, cast-iron WO Bentley engine.

If you ever wanted proof of how important racing was, is, and always will be to Aston Martin, three racing DB2s were built before the road car, two of which had four-cylinder engines like those in the 2.0-litre Sports, and one the Bentley six-cylinder. All three were entered in the 1949 Le Mans 24 Hours, but it was the six-cylinder car that finished as the overall runner up, and the choice of engine for the road car was decided.

With a basic price of £2,331, with some serious motorsport credibility behind it, 411 coupe and convertible DB2s were sold before it morphed into the larger, four-seat DB2/4.

The DB2’s influence extends to the modern day, not just with the DB initials but with the shape of the grille, too.

Aston Martin DB5 – 1963

It might seem like a cliché to include the Aston Martin DB5, what with it being the star of the James Bond film franchise on and off for six decades. But if you’re doing a list of the best Aston Martin road cars ever made, surely you have to include the one that’s arguably the most iconic?

One look at a DB4, a DB5 and a DB6 and you’d be hard-pressed to justify the extra value of the DB5 – they all look incredibly similar. But, compared to the DB4, the DB5 did bring some improvements. Unlike the straight-six engine in the DB4 the DB5’s motor was an all-aluminium affair, and it was a 4.0-litre rather than a 3.7, with more power and torque as a result. The DB5 also made use of a ZF five-speed gearbox rather than a four-speed, and you got electric windows and two fuel-filler caps. Little improvements, yes, but enough to keep customers happy.

Moreover, if you’re lucky enough to have spent any time with one, you’ll know that the details are exquisite, the cabin charming, and the noise of the straight-six engine genuinely exciting. The DB5 will be remembered for a long, long time to come.

Aston Martin V8 Vantage – 1977

The ultimate British muscle car? Quite possibly. The follow-on from the standard V8, which came after the inline-six Vantage, itself the successor of the original DBS (take one look at the four side-by-side and it’s clear to see how each evolved in turn), the V8 Vantage was a brute. It was a simple brute, too, with a very straightforward front-engined, rear-wheel-drive approach at a time when both Ferrari and Lamborghini were pressing on with mid-engined, rear-wheel-drive creations.

The grille was blanked off, as was the bonnet scoop, the suspension stiffened and lowered, bigger tyres were added, the heads were skimmed, the valves enlarged, the cams reprofiled and new carburettors added, the result being 395PS (390bhp) from its 5.3-litre V8 engine. 0-62mph took 5.3 seconds. 170mph? No problem at all. And how did those performance stats stack up against the Lamborghini Countach? The Aston was faster. Proof that more complicated doesn’t always mean better. It would later form the basis for the ludicrous Vantage V600, the most powerful car in the world for a spell.

DB7 Vantage – 1999

The DB7 was a pretty little thing, but its straight-six engine didn’t tickle everyone’s pickle. Aston Martin looked to do something new. At first it looked at a 6.3-litre V8, an engine that was powering a customer DB7 racer, but emissions regulations were getting tighter and tighter all the time, so that idea went out of the window. TWR experimented with a Jaguar V12 in the DB7, too (a 6.4-litre that TWR boss Tom Walkinshaw used as his daily driver), but that didn’t work out either. So Aston Martin turned to Ford, asking it to develop a new V12. It did.

The result was the DB7 V12, and after its reveal at the 1999 Geneva Motor Show it absolutely dominated DB7 sales, to the point where the six-cylinder DB7 was killed off later in the year.

The weight penalty was 55kg, but the V12 brought 20 per cent more power (426PS) and 17 per cent more torque (542Nm), more than enough to keep DB7 customers happy. The Vantage was back.

Aston Martin V8 Vantage – 2005

Yes, that’s right, we’re putting another car called ‘Aston Martin V8 Vantage’ on this list, but for good reason. The V8 Vantage was the less expensive, two-seater sportscar that would bring a younger generation of customer to Aston Martin while simultaneously making a stand against a car that had never been a rival before: the Porsche 911. And with 3,000 cars slated for production each year, the new V8 Vantage would be the best selling Aston Martin in the company’s history.

The recipe was similar to that of the old V8 Vantage: V8 up front, manual gearbox in the middle and rear-wheel-drive at the back. But the new V8 Vantage used a compact and lightweight V8, stuffed way back behind the front axle, giving it a front-rear 49-51 weight distribution. Think of it as front-mid-engined rather than engine-over-the-front-wheels-front-engined. Some were quick to point out that the engine was from Jaguar, and there was a certain degree of truth to that. But the engine in the Jaguar XK was a 4.2-litre but in the Aston a 4.3-litre, with an increased bore and stroke, new cylinder heads, connecting rods, crankshaft, pistons, camshafts, engine management system and so on.

Sure, it was heavier than the Porsche 911, but it was beautiful, quick (0-62mph took 4.9 seconds), made a wonderful noise and sold in the numbers Aston Martin had hoped.

Aston Martin DBS – 2007

My personal favourite, the Aston Martin DBS. This being included has nothing to do with it being a James Bond car but instead everything to do with it being the ultimate expression of the naturally-aspirated, manual V12 GT from Aston Martin.

Launched in 2007, it was in many respects an evolution of the DB9. It had fundamentally the same engine, the same chassis and the same body, but every little piece was a little bit better. Some of the bodywork, for example, was made from carbon-fibre rather than aluminium. The engine was tweaked to produced 517PS (510bhp), too, up from the DB9’s 456PS (450bhp). The suspension was tuned differently, there were carbon-ceramic brakes rather than steel, and even the carpets were made of a lighter material.

Don’t get me wrong, the second-generation Vanquish that effectively replaced the DBS was brilliant, and it still had a 6.0-litre naturally-aspirated V12, but it was automatic only and just wasn’t as good looking. The V12 Vantage, too, was truly excellent. But it’s still the DBS that gets the spot on the list.

Aston Martin DBS Superleggera – 2018

The DBS Superleggera might be a feisty, front-engined GT car, like the old DBS from the decade before, but it’s a different beast altogether. First of all the DBS Superleggera uses a tuned version of the DB11’s turbocharged 5.2-litre V12, and while the capacity might be down 0.8-litres from the old DBS, the power is up, from 517PS to 725PS. Not an insignificant gain. Moreover, and perhaps the quantity that makes more of a difference, torque is up from 569Nm to 900Nm.

The result is an absolute animal, a car with the kind of performance that you simply cannot use all the time if you have any interest in keeping your driving licence. Sure, left in its quietest, most comfortable driving mode, the DBS Superleggera makes an excellent cruiser, but come down a few gears with the eight-speed automatic and you’ll quickly deposit some of your rear tyres to the tarmac.