Andrew Frankel: 'V8 Volante was a rare classic car that exceeded expectations'

One of the more pleasant tasks of the month was to go down to Vantage Engineering near Horsham and drive the ultimate version of the original Aston Martin V8 Vantage. Made in 1989 right at the end of production this was a Volante with the coveted ‘X-Pack’ engine from the ugly but effective Aston Martin Zagato.

So often on these jobs you get excited by the prospect of driving such a car only to find it’s tired or not been prepped and you end up imagining what it would have been like had it been properly looked after. So this time I steeled myself for disappointment: I’d driven a V8 Volante before and knew it would likely have all the structural rigidity of trifle. But for once the car was far better than expected, not exactly a precision instrument, but reasonably accurate, trustworthy and tolerably competent. Which meant I could enjoy all the other stuff – that fabulous V8 and the slow but beautifully mechanical gearbox – all the more.

And it reminded me of the perils of journalists driving old cars. Does it feel that way because they always did, or because of the way it’s been maintained over the years? How can you tell? I have an unreasonable dislike for the Lotus Europa because I’ve only driven one which I’m fairly confident was a poor example and I drove it back-to-back with an Elan Sprint in clearly apple pie order which I adored. But what else can we do other than report as we find? It does make me wonder how different some verdicts in those big classic car magazine group tests might be were such variables removed. Very, I would imagine.

Driving that Aston took me back to 1984 when I was 18, toting an MG Metro I’d inherited and going to meet my father and Michael Salmon for a pub lunch. At the time Michael was racing the Group C Aston Martin Nimrod with the same Ray Mallock whose RML Group was responsible for the Short Wheelbase restomod (reviewed elsewhere in this issue). Michael turned up in a shatteringly noisy V8 Vantage which turned out to be the powertrain development mule for said Nimrod, and while its engine lacked the full race 550bhp version of the quad cam V8, it was well on the way. Would I like a run up the road in it?

You can imagine. It was so much faster than anything else I’d been in that I briefly wondered whether either Michael, the car or both had gone mad. But after about 10 minutes of this lunacy, I actually started to get used to it.

Indeed the greatest sense of its performance came not in the car but when I climbed from it back into my 72bhp Metro. And when I did, the Metro seemed so appallingly slow it is the literal truth that I thought something was wrong with it. I’d love to know what happened to that Aston. Perhaps a Mallock could advise?

Pursuant to my test of Citroën’s interesting new Ami (also in this issue), I’ve been corresponding with someone who lives in France who observes that over there “every spoilt child has one. Around secondary schools they litter the pavements like rent-a-scooters!” The big difference is that in France you can drive an Ami aged 14, while in the UK you need to be 16 and have taken a Compulsory Basic Training (CBT) test. So perhaps that’s the point and there’s the market: not just a means for the otherwise immobile to get to the shops, but also for kids to get to school. They don’t even need a driving licence, just a road safety certificate.

“In France you can drive an Ami aged 14, while in the UK it’s 16”

Whether this is a good idea or not is debatable. I can remember when my children were 14 and I’m fairly confident I’d not have been comfortable letting them beetle off to school in a car with almost zero safety systems, not least because of the risk of meeting their mates coming the other way. A top speed of 28mph may not be much but if two met at such speeds, or collided with anything else the consequences could be unthinkable. They have no crumple zones, no ABS and no warning sound if you either forget or elect not to wear your seatbelt.

Maybe I’m getting old but the point is this: if such a thing had been available to me at 14, I doubt I’d have lasted a week. Maybe I shouldn’t judge others by my own lamentable standards, but you’re still putting a child in charge of a half-tonne block capable of travelling faster than any human has ever run and trusting him or her to stay safe regardless of road conditions, be it day or night, wet or dry and presumably often with a mate or a kid sibling sitting next to them. And all without the training required of any other driver. To me the risk outweighs the reward.

I was sad to hear of the death of Syd Herbert in December, the former and formidable safety marshal at Silverstone. I only crossed ‘Silverstone Syd’ once, but I certainly got full value out of the experience. I had a chance to do a few laps of the track at an F1 tyre test in a Honda NSX driven by Ayrton Senna. Halfway down the pitlane I realised I’d forgotten my notebook. Spotting my disquiet Ayrton asked what the problem might be. I told him and he cheerfully reversed back whence we’d come. That was enough for Syd. We were summoned, sat down and given the full hairdryer treatment including, “I don’t care if you are the world champion, you don’t reverse up my pitlane!” We kept faces straight until we were back in the Honda then giggled like schoolboys. Rest well Syd, and thanks for the memory…

A former editor of Motor Sport, Andrew splits his time between testing the latest road cars and racing (mostly) historic machinery
Follow Andrew on Twitter @Andrew_Frankel