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James Bond may drive an Aston Martin DBS, but the company has just built something he might like to slide his tuxedo’d butt into. The Aston Martin DB9 may not be quite as fast as the Vanquish, but with 450 horsepower under the bonnet it’s no pushover.
How do you replace a legend? That’s what Aston Martin had to do when it replaced the DB7 – the car that saved Aston Martin from going bankrupt. Time marches on of course and to build a successor Aston decided to throw as much technology at the DB9 and see what stuck.
The first high tech touch is the chassis, which is virtually all aluminium.
Like an increasing number of cars these days the DB9 is constructed mostly from aluminum that is bonded and strengthened by self piercing rivets – the car is essentially glued together like a big model kit and then stapled. The advantage over welding is that the bonding gives the car better stress distribution than welding. Also there’s the fact that aluminium is very hard to weld due to its heat conductivity. There is some welding involved joining the upper and lower C pillars, but even here it has been given a high tech edge. Instead of using heat Aston Martin uses a sonsotrobe, which is a vibrating probe that oscillates at 20,000hz, agitating the molecules of the aluminum panels so they form a molecular bond. Because of this the weld is 90 percent stronger than a traditional weld, and Aston is the first car company in the world to use it.
The main advantage to aluminum is of course the weight savings, and the DB9 bodyshell is 25 percent lighter than the bodyshell of the previous DB7 but has more than twice the torsional rigidity. To increase weight loss and to ensure the car’s centre of gravity is low the hood, roof and rear wings are aluminum, while the front wings and trunk lid are composite materials. Weight balance is also important and Aston has shuffled components around in the car and used lightweight structures such as magnesian for the steering column and inner door frames to achieve a 50/50 front/rear balance.
Suspension is forged aluminium double wishbone at each corner, mounted on an aluminium sub frame at the front and a steel sub frame at the rear. Even the dampers are aluminium bodied, showing just how obsessed Aston Martin is with the stuff. The DB9 has a rear transaxle to help within the weight balance.
And it goes further. The wheels are flow formed rather than being cast, saving around one kilogram per wheel. This reduction in weight is especially handy because it reduces the unsprung mass of the wheel, and reduces rotational inertia.
The brakes are predictably massive, measuring 355mm at the front and 330mm at the rear. Instead of cross drilling, Aston Martin decided to go with grooves to eliminate the risk of having drilled holes filling with brake dust. The callipers are single castings, rather than being two-piece, which increases the rigidity of the assembly and improves brake feel. Like every high end product these days the DB9 comes with its own little dictionary of acronyms. There’s ABS, Electronic Brake force Distribution, Dynamic Control, Traction Control, and Brake Assist.
In a similar vein to the BMW M3 the rev counter changes its red line depending on the oil temperature, the engine’s mileage, and ambient temperature. Unlike the BMW however, which has a visible red line that slowly moves around the dial the DB9 has no red line at all. Instead a warning light comes on when you are exceeding allowable rpm, which is a stupid way to do it because you have no idea of how high you can rev the engine until you do it.
The engine is a development of the one from the Aston Martin Vanquish, and while it doesn’t have the sheer horsepower of the Vanquish motor (bad for marketing) the DB9 engine is tuned to spread more torque over a wider range. The crankshaft is new, as well as the camshafts, inlet and exhaust manifolds, and lubrication system and engine management. The resulting 331kW may lag 7.5kW behind the Vanquish but the 570Nm outweighs that of the Vanquish by 28Nm and in the DB9 80 percent of that torque is available from just 1500rpm. And yes, there has been some weight saving in the engine, with the V12 weighing 11.8kg less than the Vanquish powerplant.
You can have your DB9 with either a six speed Graziano manual gearbox or a six speed ZF auto, and we’re betting that hardly anyone is going to go for the manual. The auto allows you to change gear manually using steering wheel mounted paddles and in a strange twist there is no actual gear lever. Instead you get a series of pushbuttons on the dashboard to select Park, Neutral and all the rest.
It only takes opening the driver’s door to reveal another hidden design in the DB9. The door hinges are complex, and allow the door to swing upwards by 12 degrees as well as outwards. It’s pretty much a needless feature, but it’s something to brag about down at the pub. What is more handy is that once more than 20 degrees open to the side the doors will stop and stay exactly where you leave them, so they won’t swing in and crush your legs like pretty much every other car in the world.
Once in the driver’s seat you swing the door back down again, and the angle it rotates around helps the door close under its own weight. The DB9 is not all that big on the inside, and forget right now about fitting anyone in the back seats – even midgets would have to be on the small side.
You start the big V12 with a start button engraved with the Aston Martin badge. Plenty of people hate button starts, but I’ve always been a fan. The engine catches after a few rotations of the crankshaft and the air is instantly filled with a deep throb as the twelve cylinder wakes up. The first thing you notice is that this car has so much torque that you hardly need to change gear at all, so muscular is the low rpm response. It’s competely unlike the high strung nature of the Vanquish engine and suits the GT aspirations of the DB7. The ZF six speed gearbox is essentially the same unit you find in cars like the BMW 7-Series and Lexus LS430, and it does its usual excellent job of slurring through the gears. One trick Aston Martin engineers came up with was an engine blip every time you change down. It’s probably not needed by the gearbox, but it does make you sound as if you are Michael Schumacher slowing down for a hairpin.
Ride quality in town can be a strain on your spine. Cracks and seams in the tarmac are telegraphed through the stiff chassis directly to your butt. You soon get to feeling that the suspension is far too stiff, but once out on the open road the movement smoothes out and the Aston really gets into its stride. At speeds appreciably higher than the open road speed limit the car remains absolutely stable, the ultra stiff chassis allowing the suspension to work properly. There’s no float, no uncertain moments when the car goes light over a bump, just relentless all encompassing stability.
The experience would not be complete without the performance from the 6.0 litre V12. Hit the throttle squarely to the floor and the surrounding world takes on strange colours as the fluid in your eyeballs gets pushed to the back of your head. There’s nothing but seemingly endless acceleration, aided by the lag free nature of a big capacity V12. And the sound is epic – all twelve cylinders breathing in and out at an ever increasing rate. It’s a crisp, mean sound, angry as hell, and quite unlike the deep bellow of a V8 or a zinging V10. Hit the brakes – because you are now travelling fast enough to be mistaken for a cruise missile - and the brakes bite cleanly and progressively. The stability system wants to get too involved in the process of driving though, and when you are cornering hard you can feel the system braking each wheel independently. It could be much smoother, but I suppose Aston’s engineers wanted the car to step out a little before the electronics rein in back in. All very well on a perfectly smooth road, but New Zealand only has three metres of smooth tarmac in the whole country. On your typical rough NZ road the car feels lively to the point of promoting car sickness – at least when you’re doing your best to get the perfect cornering shot.
The gearbox is pretty much unbeatable – it changes gear so quickly that you wouldn’t be able to beat it with a manual and in sport mode it won’t change gear any more quicker but it will let you bang right into the red line if you don’t change gear early enough. But watch out because the car accelerates from a standstill so quickly that it’s almost impossible to flip the paddle before you slam into the rpm cut-out. Having no visible red line to guide you doesn’t help either. It’s actually better to leave the box out in normal mode and let it change into second for you, and after that you can change gear manually to your heart’s content.
But despite that the Aston martin DB9 remains a devastating point to point weapon. An asking price of a cool NZ$320,000 means that not many people will ever be able to experience one, but there’s enough quiet money out there that thinks a Porsche is just too vulgar, and will take a good long look at the quite frankly beautiful DB9. You would probably have more fun in a 911 turbo, but then again a car like that can attract the wrong kind of attention, while the DB9 is much more the sort of car a secret agent would drive. And so to the echoing sounds of the Bond theme, we take the long way back to the dealership. Dum-de-da-dum-dum.
