Background
The Aston Martins that followed on from the DB6 were very obviously from the pen of a different designer.
They took their aesthetic cues from the design zeitgeist of the 60s and 70s, not the 40s and 50s. They also tipped an unapologetic and undisguised nod to America’s muscle cars – the Ford Mustang in particular.
After the DB6 came the DBS, still with a six-cylinder engine and patiently awaiting the arrival of a V8 that promised to give the car the grunt to go with the grace.
The V8 proved to be well worth waiting for. It was a proper muscle car and one that owed its squat, steroidal stance and sleekly aggressive profile to the design pen of Aston’s William Towns.
The engine was designed by Polish émigré Tadek Marek, a man whose inimitable engineering imprint stretches from the DBR2 racing car engine, through the redesign of Aston’s venerable, Bentley-derived straight-six, to the development of the 5.3-litre V8 for the DBS V8 in 1969.
Several iterations later, this fabulous powerplant only reluctantly retired once it had motored into the new millennium, bulked up to 600bhp, and propelled the Vantage 600 to speeds reputedly in excess of 200mph.
The Aston Martin V8 Series 2 was the first of the line to be known simply as the V8 (its predecessor, the DBS V8, was effectively the Aston Martin V8 Series 1, although it never bore that moniker).
Weber carburettors were reinstated for the Series 3 in 1973, and the cars were identifiable by the larger bonnet scoops designed to accommodate them. Series 3 V8s could reach 60mph in 5.7 seconds with a manual gearbox, and although performance was somewhat neutered by emissions regulations in 1976, cars with the following year’s ‘engine enhancements were back up to 305bhp.
The last Series 3 cars were produced in October 1978, by which time a total of 967 Series 3 V8s had rolled off the production line at Newport Pagnell.
Every car took around 1,200 man-hours to build and each was every bit as handmade as a Savile Row suit.
The Aston Martin V8 may have had more than enough testosterone to compete with the Mustangs, Chargers and Corvettes of its trans-Atlantic cousins, but it did so with all the unmistakably British pedigree and class of a gentleman’s club.
