Farewell to the Aston Martin DB9

Automologist MAC bids goodbye to the one that he never got.

Aston Martin has announced that after 13 years of production, the era of the DB9 is to draw to a close this week. It feels to me almost like there has been a death in the family and whilst I never even got to sit in one, that didn’t stop me salivating over a car that really was automotive pornography.

The DB9 was tasked to replace the DB7, a good offering but really just a dressed-up Jaguar XJS - a Jag in Drag, if you like. What Henrick Fisker and Ian Callum (the designers of the DB9) wowed the crowds with back at the 2003 Frankfurt Motor show was probably the reason that there is still production at the Aston Martin factory at Gaydon in Warwickshire, and certainly enabled the automaker to survive after Ford so unceremoniously dumped them.

Aston Martin has long been associated with the James Bond film franchises ever since a DB5 was used by Sean Connery in the 1964 classic Goldfinger. The DB9, though, was never an official Bond car, although there was a DB10 in the 2015 Spectre and Aston Martin did release 150 special edition 007 versions to celebrate the fifty-year association.

Of course this is not the end of the Aston Martin as work has already begun to build the replacement vehicle, the DB11. The new model promises to be a similar leap forward that the DB9 was and in a way it has left me feeling like I lost fifty cents but found a dollar. Gone is the normally aspirated engine and in comes a V12 with twin turbos, supposedly for better fuel economy but really for oodles more power.

Talking about power, the switch to turbos has really worked, with a claimed 600hp backed by more torque than any sane man could possibly use, resulting in a 0-100 kph time of 3.8 seconds moving on to a top speed of 322 kph. I just hope and pray that the new version will be able to match the amazing soundtrack of its predecessor as well.

The DB11 is slated to launch in 2017 and there is no doubt that it has to fill really big shoes, but with a price tag in the US of A of US$211,000, I doubt that I will get to sit in the newest Aston either.