When Less is More

In 2016, Aston Martin impressed the world with the magnificent DB11 V12. This year, as an encore, the marque has released a V8 version, which Andre Lam takes to the hills of Catalonia in Spain

ston martin has been around for over a century, but not all those years have been rosy. Fortunately, the company has seen a prolonged period of growth and stability since the turn of the millennium with the introduction of the DB9, Vanquish, Rapide and Vantage series. In the recent few years, the marque’s president and CEO, Andy Palmer, has also put together a game plan for the future, one that he hopes will pit Aston Martin against rivals Ferrari and Bentley. He optimistically terms this game plan the “Second Century” plan, and the first real project under it: the DB11 V12. The DB11 drew gasps when it was introduced in 2016, even though we had already caught a glimpse of its inspiration in an earlier concept car—the Db10—in the 2015 James Bond film Spectre. Aston Martin surprised gearheads when it introduced the DB11’S second engine variant, the V8, in September this year, as most were expecting the V8 to debut within the Vantage line. It is no secret that Palmer’s plan is contingent on a technical and financial partnership with Mercedes-amg, with the former being more substantial. The most obvious contribution is the AMG V8 engine, which powers the high-performance Mercedes-amg C63 S. Aston Martin had its own V8 engines, but it was unable to keep up with the ever-tightening European emission standards. More importantly, the marque needed an entirely modern electronic network for its cars, which was where Mercedes-amg helped. Though the hardware comes from Mercedes-amg, the electronic calibration of the V8 engine is entirely by Aston Martin.