Why The Last Truly British Aston Was Terrible AND Brilliant! Aston Martin DBS V8

hello everybody Welcome to number 27 I'm Jack and today we're going to talk about why the DBS is both bonds best and worst car so we are specifically going to be looking at the DBS and the DBS V8 two cars which are very similar outwardly but actually very very different cars thank you to bidding Classics for sponsoring today's video check out this online auction for classic cars with no buyers fees so let me very quickly give you a brief history of the astons that have been in the Bond film so I'll need my list for this because I I can't remember them all 1965 we had the DB5 that was in Goldfinger that is really probably known as the classic Bond car in 1969 we had the original DBS which is the one that I'm going to talk to you about and that I'm going to argue is perhaps bondsworth Aston that was on Her Majesty's Secret Service with uh George Lazenby then in 1987 we had the V8 in which Aston kind of redeemed themselves the car we have here today is a V8 it's an earlier V8 the later cars were modified to some degree but really it's essentially the same car and that V8 was featured again in 2021 in no time to die in 2002 we had the more modern raft of Aston so the V12 van Vanquish and Die Another Day In 2006 a DBS in Casino Royale 2015 the db10 inspector so in order to make you understand my point about the DBS V8 which one's the best which one's the worst for the Bond films I need to give you a little bit of history now the DBS was the follow-up to the Aston db6 and it was a radical departure for Aston Martin up until then they'd kind of been rehashing the same theme and they needed something new something radical something different and that was this car and in terms of the looks the way it was penned I think it's fantastically successful it's a brutish design yet it's elegant it's taught it's almost a violent looking car so it looks great but when the DBS was launched it was intended to also have Aston Martin's brand new V8 they found they had a few difficulties though with that and with the reliability and when the car was ready to go the engine wasn't so when it was first launched they used the old inline 6 which was also in the db6 the result was that in a heavier car the new Aston was actually slower than the previous one and it appeared on Her Majesty's Secret Service you'll notice that that's the only Bond film where an Aston appears but it's not actually used for a Chase was that because it was so slow probably not but it is quite apt the car that replaced the standard DBS was called the DBS V8 that came out two years later in 1969 I think and by then Aston had sorted out all the niggles that they had with this V8 and this engine was so successful it went on to power Aston Martins for the next 20 years when it was launched the DBS V8 became perhaps Britain's first Supercar it was a tour de force it was the fastest four-seater in the world the quadcam 5.4 liter V8 put out 320 horsepower a useful 40 horsepower more than the previous DBS naught to 60 went down to just six seconds 160 mile an hour top speed on the right day for an incredible follow-up for Aston Martin it brought them back where they should have been the V8 was featured in The Living Daylights with Timothy Timothy Dalton in 1987 and that was technically just known as the V8 by then they had done a few touches and changes to it but it was basically the same car that one also had a host of gadgets from laser Wheels to missiles to sort of a head-up display and surely one of Bond's most memorable cars now controversially I said earlier the worst and the best car well I personally think the DBS actually we shouldn't be too mean to it that inline six is a fantastic engine but it was a bit and underpowered for this car the V8 made it what it should have been and in my mind Perhaps it is the best Aston for Bond because it has that sort of Menace that British Bulldog feel about it whereas the other cars were either the earlier ones the db5s were a little bit too delicate I think for Bond and the later cars well in my mind I mean they have their good things going for them but they're not proper astons in the same vein as these let's take it out now and I'm going to tell you more about how it ranks as a bond car and more importantly how it drives first thing you notice when you get in the car is this fly-off handbrake which is the most bizarre position but once you get used to it it's pretty much okay then you see that this has a dog leg first quite an unusual for what is a GT car but I think the reason was that this was probably the only gearbox that the ZF produced that could handle the power and talk of this engine now the reason why you'd normally have dog leg is for racing cars really because racing cars don't ever use first gear so if you move second up there then you're not having to go diagonally from second to third it's just a straight shift down from second to third gear and back up anyway it's a quirk of this car and it's interesting to see the interior very British very nice loads of hide lovely thick carpets looks quite classy really the ergonomics are I would say unbelievable you have your sort of controls for the screen wash and everything else just hidden away down here with the heater controls here as well which apparently tend not to work and again I just tucked away so you can hardly see them you also have the controls for the suspension this has a system the db6 also had it was adjustable rear suspension but it doesn't actually work I don't think it worked when new either and bizarrely you have the control for the fans here and other sort of controls for the heating so they're sort of spread all over the place really the dials are fairly clear some of them are obscured by the wheel but the main ones that you need which is basically the speed and the revs they're not they're nice and clear it's got a real Italian driving position this thing I don't know quite why legs really pushed up against the pedals and to make it a bit worse the wheel is actually quite low so in some cars the Italian driving position isn't such a bad thing because at least you have room for your legs to be folded up in this you don't so in terms of driving position it's not the best sort of introduction to be quite honest with you it's a nod driving position but you come into this DBS and you're greeted with that lovely leather sort of smell that you can't replicate it's only in cars from the sort of 60s high-end cars 60s and 70s it rides really well the engine feels pretty torquey from right from the get-go and as I found out recently when I watched the interior Zone video on this car please do have a look at that it is an incredible source of info for these things apparently these were made the bucks for them anyway were made three inches too short and then was originally planned which is why for the original car they didn't want to change the Bucks which was too expensive so they just made the cars wider let's give it a bit of a pull here you know where what an engine quite special these Aston V8s they have a little bit a little bit of a feel of an American V8 but just much more muscular compared to the V8s I've driven are much more willing to rev as well so it doesn't rev well the red line is at six thousand I didn't quite go up there but it's got an absolutely stonking mid-range very smooth steering is fairly positive I mean you can feel the suspension on this car is still a little bit old-fashioned it rides pretty well but doesn't feel like it's always dealing with the the bumps and the best way possible like it's keeping the wheels feel like they skip a little bit sometimes that engine though it's really addictive it's just so muscular it suits the way this car looks perfectly now I'm sort of settling into it maybe I I could get comfortable you kind of have to let yourself sink down a little bit that gives me a bit more clearance up here as well brings you a bit closer to the wheel my knees are a bit further forward but it is an odd driving position as you can see my leg my arms are completely stretched out the brake pedal is firm but I have to say the brakes do feel quite weak it doesn't feel like you could uh rely on them if you were really throwing this thing about there's quite a lot of body movement and it you know it has the feel that the front end probably wants to push wide if you throw it in a bit too fast turn into the corner and the front leans down the back doesn't doesn't it doesn't give you the information back it doesn't tell you that it's really happy to turn into that corner the initial turning is good but then as you keep turning it in and asking more from it not so good and it is really very soft [Music] it's all about the engine fantastic gear changes quite long and quite slow again in a Torah that doesn't really matter too much oh we're coming up for the second pool now and you know what I'm really going to enjoy this I'm going to take it right to the red line Robin who owns it was encouraging me was telling me you really have to get these cars by the Scruff of the neck and that's exactly what I'm gonna do [Music] oh it is quick it really is it's the way it's the mid-range that it develops and then it flattens off a little bit at the top but not much I mean it's happy to be revved all the way through and it doesn't like Corners it really doesn't throw it in back end slid a tiny bit there but not very much feels like it's quite benign really when it does let go there isn't a huge amount of grip and it does roll all over the place but it's almost amusing because within that it doesn't ever feel like it's going to be unsafe but you can tell really that it was set up to be a grand tourer the seats have very little bolstering they are pretty comfortable they're not the best seats I've been in but they're pretty good actually but yeah no side support at all so you slide around all over the place the forces that it develops in Corners are pretty limited and the suspension also gets flustered when you're driving it too hard but it's an incredibly appealing car though because despite some of the flaws like the way it uh the way it leans it's mainly with the suspension really but I mean they are heavy cars sort of almost 1600 kilos for the time so despite the fact that it leans a bit the suspension kind of runs out of talent in certain areas it's still quite fun to drive it around and to drive it quite hard so quite an odd car in that way but really appealing this had mechanical fuel injection which is notoriously finicky and difficult to set up I mean these engines are incredible but they are very sensitive to setup both the throttle linkage is incredibly complicated but also the fuel injection system can be it can be quite hard to get it to work properly so much so that in the later cars so I don't know if it was the series two or three when it just changed back from DBS V8 to just V8 it actually first for a stage went back to carbs to Weber carves in this car to me it seems to work really well Robin was saying that it does run a bit Rich sometimes when you start it up you get a buffer of you know a buffer smoke and stuff but to me it feels like it's running really well so do you agree with me that the DBS and V8 or the V8 by that stage it was called was Bond's best car I think that the DBS when it came out it worked in terms of looks but it just wasn't fast enough to be a bond car when this came out it had the brutish muscle to back up the looks and for me it really was it is perhaps the best car the best bone dust and of all time the DB5 was just a bit too elegant they don't actually they don't drive or perform that well and the later cars I don't know the four deer astons they're not like the traditional astons these ones and the V8s that came after they have all the traits that you expect from Aston Martin they have the muscular threatening looks but this also has the engine to back that up yes okay they're not the best handling things they were intended mainly as GT cars but although they don't handle that well they still they're still fun to Chuck about despite their failings so down here a little bit of patter from the front then you Chuck it in the initial turning is good as you tighten it doesn't feel like it really wants to but it kind of reluctantly does yeah even using a bit of throttle at these speeds anyway it just seems to push it wider probably the best technique for this is still a slow-in fast out it really builds speed I'm amazed how quick it is it pushes you back against the seat I mean 320 horsepower it must be I don't know what the torque figures are or how it develops that talk but it it feels like more than 320 to me what an engine you know the steering is quite slow it tells you what's happening to the front wheels it isn't one of the all-time great steering systems in terms of fuel but but it's all right it gets quite light when you speed up probably a bit too light for a proper sports car but fine for a GT it is almost comical around tight corners engine God I love that engine oh thank you all so much for watching if you have a car if you have a car that you want me to review then please get in touch Instagram is the best way email is also all right um I really look forward to seeing you for the next video thank you so much for watching

Channel: Number 27

Views: 108,675

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Id: EM2TWlywi_M

Length: 16min 39sec (999 seconds)

Published: Mon May 22 2023