Editorial

Is there no end to today’s heightened level of industry at Aston Martin? Most manufacturers would be quietly purring, washing their whiskers and delighted with the level of interest in the four-door ‘concept’ Rapide that the company launched at Detroit earlier this month. Hot on the heels of this announcement comes the (not so surprising in the scheme of things) news that James Bond will once again drive a product from Astons – and it’s another all-new model to boot.

With speculation rife as to what the new car - titled ‘DBS’ - will actually be, hot money is either on a Vanquish successor or a last-of-the-line mega-Vanquish. We shall have to wait and see, and as someone else pointed out ‘DBS’ can look like ‘DB5’!

The original DBS, in 6-cylinder and V8 guises, is something of a ‘sleeper’ now, and the same description can be applied to the Ferrari Boxer in its various forms. We’ve a nice article courtesy of Auto Italia below that describes the driving experience of a restored car round the lanes near Goodwood. I’ve always liked these, but unfortunately until prices improve there will be some sad examples out there that are beyond economic restoration – a pity.

There’s also news of a concept car that UK-based race and rally engineering specialists (bar non) Prodrive have made using some proprietary components, but also many of their cleverly thought out parts and mechanical solutions. The great news is it’s a running and fully functional car, and that it could be produced to retail at a relatively modest sum.

Rest assured Prodrive certainly knows what it’s doing – you can see another of its creations above.

Steve Wakefield Managing Editor sw@classicdriver.com