We finally get the Vantage started.
It turns out that if you leave a prototype Aston Martin in a trailer for three days while driving it to the middle of Sweden through temperatures that drop as low as -25ºC, you have issues – a frozen starter motor currently being the most pressing.
Neither a hot pan of water nor a blowtorch does the trick. It’s only once it has been rolled inside the barn at Kall’s woodyard and left for an hour that we can coax life into it. This is the life of a prototype. This is why you do winter testing.
Coming to TopGear’s ice lake extravaganza is not part of Aston’s ofcial development programme, but it has already, and will continue to, throw up issues that will be fed back to the designers and engineers at Gaydon. Because there are three main facets to why all manufacturers go winter testing. “From an analytical point of view there are two things we have to achieve: ESP calibration and winter tyre development” says Matt Becker, chief vehicle attribute engineer, “but the third is more subjective – we drive a car around and report on any issues it has.” TopGear knows nothing about ESP and tyre development, but it is quite good at driving stuf around until it breaks.
Aston conducts its winter testing in Finland using one car. It takes six weeks and covers 20,000km (over 12,000 miles). The car is driven over a set route in shifts by a team of mainly local drivers, but two engineers and a technician are there as well. “Everything that happens to the car is logged and reported back,” continues Becker, “and we then make a judgement call on whether it’s something that needs to be sorted, or something an owner would be so unlikely to replicate that we let it pass.” Funnily enough, Scandinavian Aston owners don’t tend to leave their cars outside unstarted for days on end, and if they did
they’d probably do what most people at these latitudes do, and ft a block-heater to the car to keep the engine temperature from dropping below a certain level…
Anyway, the Vantage is now working. The 4.0-litre twin turbo V8 spins into life with less drama and noise than the similarly equipped Mercedes-AMG GLC63, selects a gear smoothly via the glove-friendly buttons and of I trundle to the lake. The cabin looks and feels better organised than the DB11’s, more intimate, and although the steering wheel is a peculiar shape, it’s lovely to hold. The left-hand thumb button that selects the suspension settings isn’t functioning properly – no clean click. I’ll be feeding that back. But otherwise all is good. It’s even starting to get warm in here.
Driving on ice tells you a lot about balance and traction. How the diferential works, how wheels cope with torque and so on. And the Aston very quickly proves itself much friendlier and more fattering than every other rear-driver we have here. The McLaren is snatchy, the 911 GT3 is cheating as it’s wearing studs, as is the Nomad. Not even the switchable E63 and M5 slide around as gracefully. The Aston is balletic, controllable and moves with such sinuous ease that it carries good speed through corners, linking sections, never straight, always intuitive. This, I fnd myself thinking, bodes well for its dry tarmac behaviour.
And a handful of seconds later, I sling it into a snowbank. I meant to of course, so I could check that all the underbody protection was properly attached. Turns out it wasn’t – the rear undertray became detached. I’ll let them know. The ofice excursion has the added efect of packing snow into the front wheels. When we get back to the pits, this melts into the gap between brake pads and discs, where it freezes, rendering the Aston immovable for the second time today. I can put it in drive, and get out and watch the rear wheels spin uselessly on the ice. Something else to feed back.
Unsticking it requires frstly, a hammer to tap the caliper and secondly, when that fails, a blowtorch. However, the Aston is not the only car so aficted: 570S, 911 GT3, NSX, Huracán, GT-R – all the super sports stuf that runs pads close to discs to improve response, sufers the same fate. In the end, we have to make sure they’re moved every fve minutes.
So popular is the Vantage that takes care of itself. We discover that the cold confuses the tyre-pressure sensors, that the ESP’s Sport setting is beautifully judged, that when you’re wearing many layers it’s impossible to adjust the seat, that the camo makes several onlookers believe they’re looking at the nextgen Subaru BRZ, and that it’s just as well the emergency cut-out button isn’t a feature on customer cars because it’s far too easy to catch with a failing elbow. We’ll be telling Aston all of this. And we’ll also be telling them the chassis balance appears to be spoton, and we’re happy to verify this by driving it on tarmac asap.
“Neither a hot pan of water nor a blowtorch does the trick”