13 Jun 07
My drive home was like the outward journey but minus any excitement involving pens, phones or roadworks.
A straight line across Belgium is unlikely to tell you much about the way a car performs, although it does clue you up about its seats (comfy, for a sports car), its air con (fabulous), its economy (average 21.4mpg over 916 miles), its audio (deep and crisp and even) and the quality of the little details, the things you fiddle with when you've got nothing better to do (Alcantara positioned out of sight where your fingers touch the interior door handle: lovely).
The best bit of driving wasn't going to or from Germany, though, it was on the roads near the Nurburgring, when I was travelling between circuit and hotel, or just heading off up a winding road through the forest because it looked like fun. It added up to a couple of hundred bonus miles, an unscripted part of the weekend, when I felt like the bloke in the Saab advert who goes for a drive while everyone else is indoors watching the big match.
The roads, the mist, the trees and, yes, the car gave me my own mini-Nurburgring experience. The Aston felt alive, alert, responsive. That said, it's not a car that reads your mind; you need to be quite firm with even the smallest of minor controls. It's a sturdy, unflappable car that will hold its course until you tell it to do something else.
And it's quick. Not insanely quick - not race-winningly quick. But it sits beautifully at the junction of sports car and grand touring car, fun car and seriously good car. And if what Aston is learning on the track has played a part in making the Vantage so good, then all that lost sleep has been well worth it.
Feature: Driving Aston's Le Mans racer
Driven: Aston Martin V8 Vantage Sportshift
