2014 Aston Martin Vanquish In Skyfall Silver, With Only 1,103 Miles! on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Inside the Aston Martin Heritage Trust, the company's secret museum

The Aston Martin Heritage Trust Museum has been in existence since 2002. It houses the official archives of the Aston Martin Lagonda Company, as well as those of the Aston Martin Owners Club, at the behest of which the Museum was founded back in 1998. It also houses a rotating collection of distinctive and historically significant Aston Martin vehicles, cherry picked from a century of the automaker's exquisite existence. Unfortunately for those besotted with the brand, as I am, the AHMT is located on the periphery of the exurbs of nowhere, in a restored 14th century barn on a dirt road, blocks off the river in the wee Midlands village of Drayton St. Leonard. An address is not published. The only indication that you might be in the right place is an almost intentionally innocuous government tourism placard, placed somewhat near the turnoff. "We used to maybe get a hundred visitors a year before they put up the sign," says AMHT Curator Donna Bannister, an American of equally mysterious provenance. "Now we get almost a hundred per month." Lucky are the souls who find the AMHT (my cabby wasn't among them; I had to walk a bit), because it houses, in its cramped Middle Aged quarters, some real treasures. Greeting me when I entered was a bare-metal-nosed 1921 A3, the oldest existing Aston Martin in the world, which was bought at auction in 2000 and restored to driving condition via the generous underwriting of Sheik Nasser of Kuwait, who is apparently a huge AM collector. "It won Kop Hill in 1923," Bannister says. "We recently took it back there, and to the Windsor Concours d'Elegance. Of course the Royals are big fans of the Aston brand." There's also a 1934 Ulster BLB 684, the only remaining one in a 2+2 configuration. This car is a driver as well. "Club members can hire it out," Bannister says. "Though because it's quite difficult to drive – it has the clutch in the center, and the gas and brake on either side – only a few do." There is a passel of more recent notables, like the 2000 V12 Vanquish cutaway, an auto show maquette meant to demonstrate the fruits of Ford's huge investment in the brand at the start of this century. There's a pre-production, gloss white 2013 Vanquish Volante, which was used for photos and promotion as well, but never registered due to some inconsistencies in the paint. There are display engines from the DB4GT, the Lagonda V8, and the twin-supercharged Vantage (swoon!).

Dany Bahar plans Aston Martin shooting brake at Modena-based tuner

You can't keep a good man down, or so the saying goes. The jury may still be out on whether Dany Bahar was a good thing for the automotive industry – with some portraying him as an overambitious opportunist and others pitting him as a genuine car guy against the bean-counters – but he's not about to stay down for long. Bahar, for those unfamiliar, was a top executive at Red Bull, serving as right-hand man to Dietrich Mateschitz right around the time that the energy drink company was getting into Formula One and NASCAR. He was then poached by Ferrari to serve as its commercial chief and brand director before taking up the reins as CEO of Lotus. Things didn't go quite so well for him there after new owners fired him, accused him of misappropriating company funds and canceling just about every one of his ambitious (or perhaps overambitious) projects to take Lotus into the modern age. But now he's back on his feet. According to Car and Driver, Bahar's new project is a tuning house and coachbuilder called Ares. Similar to an outfit like Mansory (with which Bahar, incidentally, fostered close ties while at Lotus), Ares is out to make high-end vehicles like the Range Rover Sport, Rolls-Royce Wraith and Lamborghini Huracan that much more unique. But the biggest project Ares is planning to undertake is to turn the Aston Martin Rapide S and Bentley Continental GT into shooting brakes for wealthy customers. Ares wouldn't be the first outfit to do so, Bertone having made a wagon version of the Rapide and Touring having offered an extended-roof Continental. But to show he's not messing around, Bahar has assembled a top team at Ares. Wolf Zimmermann, who worked for Mercedes-AMG before becoming Bahar's R&D chief at Lotus, is handling the technical aspects. 24-year-old Romanian designer Mihai Panaitescu, who is said to have worked on those aborted Lotus projects, is handling the style aspect. And the whole outfit is being based in Modena, Italy – the city that is home to outfits like Pagani, Maserati and nearby Ferrari. Predictably enough, Ares will launch initially in China, Russia and the Middle East, but reportedly plans to make it to the US sometime early next year. Featured Gallery 2014 Aston Martin Rapide S: First Drive View 32 Photos News Source: Car and DriverImage Credit: Copyright 2014 Drew Phillips / AOL Aftermarket Aston Martin dany bahar aston martin rapide s

You can buy James Bond's Spectre Aston Martin DB10

If you watched Daniel Craig sliding around Rome in Spectre and wished you could drive the Aston Martin DB10 too, an upcoming Christie's auction will be your best chance to own one. The company will sell the first of these rare cars to the public on February 18 in London, but you'll probably need a martini – shaken, not stirred – after signing the check because the coupe will likely go for over 1 million pounds ($1.4 million at current rates). The proceeds will benefit Medecins Sans Frontieres. Aston Martin designed the DB10 specifically for Bond and built 10 of them for Spectre. Underneath the carbon-fiber body, the British automaker based them on the V8 Vantage, including its 4.7-liter V8 and six-speed manual gearbox. The movie's production modified most of the DB10s for filming, but it left two untouched, including this one. Daniel Craig also signed the car. The chance to share a vehicle with James Bond sounds incredibly tempting, but you might have a hard time taking the DB10 out for a drive because Aston Martin doesn't have homologation for the car or certification for it to be on public roads. However, you could still enjoy pretending to be a secret agent around a track or another piece of private tarmac. UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO OWN AN ASTON MARTIN DB10 PREDICTED TO RAISE OVER GBP1 MILLION FOR CHARITY The only DB10 to date to be made available for private ownership Opportunity to own a piece of automotive history To be auctioned on February 18th to raise money for Medecins Sans Frontieres 21 January, 2016, Gaydon: The Aston Martin DB10 – the first car created exclusively for James Bond by British luxury brand Aston Martin – is to go under the auctioneer's gavel at the London auction house of Christie's on 18th February with proceeds donated to Medecins Sans Frontieres. 'Spectre – The Auction' celebrates the release of the 24th Bond film on Digital HD, Blu-ray™ and DVD with 24 special auction lots going under the hammer for charity, led by the Aston Martin DB10. Celebrating the great British brand's half century with Bond, which started with the iconic DB5, the DB10 gives a glimpse of the future design direction for the next generation of Aston Martins. Production of the DB10 was strictly limited to ten examples of the bespoke sports car which was developed and hand-built by the designers, engineers and artisan craftspeople at Aston Martin's Gaydon headquarters in the UK for the latest Bond film, Spectre.