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| Road Test: Aston Martin DB9 (2004-) |
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| Exotic Sports |
by: John Simister |
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Aston Martin DB9 Gallery
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| PERFORMANCE RATING: |
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Sizzling but smoothYou couldn't reasonably ask for more pace than the 186mph and 4.9-second 0-60mph time that even the automatic offers. Go for a true manual, which weighs less, and that time is down to 4.7 seconds. There's no valve-timing or variable inlet-manifolding trickery here, but the engine delivers a broad spread of potent pulling power right up to 6500rpm. Carefully tuned intake and exhaust lengths give the DB9 a fabulously racy sound when revved and worked hard, with a few deliberate disharmonies to make the note more powerful and more gutteral. A valve closes off the loud part of the exhaust at low speeds and light loads in order not to startle urban pedestrians. The idle is surprisingly busy-sounding with obvious aural indication of reciprocating pieces of metal, but that adds to the notion of well-oiled machinery with huge power potential. The gear ratios are a good compromise between easy cruising and instant acceleration, but such is the torque-spread that you can easily burble past slow traffic without much of a downshift.
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Introduction It might be slightly difficult to tell the latest generation of ... |
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