ASTON MARTIN SERIES 3 V8

IT’S SOMEHOW refreshing to see the name Aston Martin attached to a classic that doesn’t have six zeroes hanging off the price tag. Sure, $150k is a lot of money, but it’s still well below what you might pay for a classic Australian muscle car from the same era.

This series grew out of the six-cylinder DBS of 1970, seen at the time as the poor man’s Aston. These days you’d be pretty damn happy to own one.

In this, the third-gen guise, it was running a quad-cam 5.3-litre alloy V8, claiming 320 horses (239kW ). That was enough to punt what is a true four-seater GT car to an astonishing 6.3sec 0-100km/h time, a 150mph (240km/h) top speed and a respectable 14.3sec quarter mile.

The one to have of the 967 production is the five-speed manual, though a three-speed auto was available.

A significant change in the Series 3 was a swap from Bosch fuel injection to Weber carbs – three in this case. That may seem to be swimming against the technological tide, but the story is the company struggled to get that engine running right with the early Bosch set-up. This example claims to be a good honest driver rather than a show car, with a welldocumented history going back to when it left the factory. And yes, it has the matching numbers that people get obsessive over.

For the right person, this would be a relatively economical entry to the world of classic Astons. Time to brush up on your James Bond impersonation, perhaps?