13 Jun 07
There's been car racing for as long as there have been cars, but the relationship between road and track hasn't always lived up to the hype. Carmakers have often found it easier to talk about racing improving the breed than to actually deliver the goods.
There are notable exceptions - Porsche and Ferrari, most prominently - who've used the racetrack to develop the engineering of their road cars. And now, after a few decades spent being rather preoccupied with business matters, Aston Martin looks like it's ready to rejoin that honourable list.
To find out how the increasingly sport-minded Aston's road cars are shaping up, we drove a V8 Vantage - the coupe version, with the Sportshift automated manual gearbox - to the Nurburgring in Germany's Eifel region. There, we watched four Aston Martins being raced in the annual round-the-clock marathon. And then we drove back. A simple plan. Not much science involved, but some art, a little drama and a lot of history.
Not long ago, you'd have thought twice about relying on an Aston for the trip to the Kent coast, let alone the 300-mile drive from Calais to the 'Ring - the fabled combination of GP track and road circuit worshipped and feared by insatiable trackday hounds and car companies keen to push their prototypes to the limits.
But Aston reliability is no longer a big issue; Ford ownership knocked it into shape and the gleaming factory at Gaydon will continue to operate to the highest standards under Aston's new chairman, Prodrive boss David Richards, who didn't get where he is today by tolerating any sloppiness.
