Brilliant on a dry surface
It seems that we can forget for a while the initials ‘DB’ in Aston Martin product designations. Aston seeks to set the Virage apart from its almost identical looking siblings, the DB9 and the DBS. The British car maker is not only masterful in its command of automotive design but also resourceful, if not poetic, in its choice of names. ‘Virage’ rolls trippingly from the tongue and the word’s French origins are helpful with the implicit allusion to ‘curves’ and ‘corners’. For it is in the curves and corners that the 1.8 ton sports car comes into its own. Take a well-engineered road swooping dramatically through hills and valleys and you have the perfect terrain to appreciate the superb driving experience the Virage can provide. On a dry surface the 497 horsepower of the V12 engine are sufficient for a ride which is truly breathtaking. For the maximum enjoyment it is best to put the very precise six-speed automatic transmission on ‘Sport’ mode, let the system do all the hard work, and allow yourself to concentrate simply on the beauty of the landscape and, of course, any oncoming traffic. But on damp or wet roads the situation is less idyllic. Here the Virage has difficulty in getting its massive power effectively onto the asphalt. But who in his right mind takes such an elite sports car for a trip in lousy weather?
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- On a dry surface the 497 horsepower of the V12 engine are sufficient for a ride which is truly breathtaking.
Very close to the DBS
A model badged Virage is nothing new for Aston Martin. Back at the end of the eighties and at the beginning of the nineties there was a Virage as top model in the car maker’s portfolio. Now when the intention was to make an auto to fill the gap between gran tourismo and super sports car it was the right moment to use the name once more. From the point of view of performance... and particularly in ‘Sport’ mode... the Virage comes very close to matching the current top model, the DBS. The steering is precise and the brakes have no difficulty in providing the stopping power that this big car needs. The wide track, the long wheel-base and the placement of the V12 power plant on and behind the front axle give a very beneficial balance of weight. But this factor… the 1.8 tons overall… does become an issue. In spite of the massive push of the V12 the car’s weight is really felt when the radius of the corners becomes tighter.
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- In order to distance the Virage just a bit from the DBS model the horsepower has been held to below the 500 mark, to 497 to be exact. And the top speed of 299 kilometres an hour conceals more than it reveals.
Smiles at the filling station
The performance is in general as impressive as one might expect from a car made by Aston Martin. In order to distance the Virage just a bit from the DBS model the horsepower has been held to below the 500 mark, to 497 to be exact. And the top speed of 299 kilometres an hour conceals more than it reveals. With a fuel consumption of 15 litres per hundred driven it is immediately clear that Aston have built into this 4.7 metre long model none of the economy and efficiency features which are no so common these days. The driver must settle for a maximum of 570 Newton metres of torque and a fantastic sound coming from the end pipes when he makes one of his very frequent visits to the local filling station...
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- The interior of the luxury coupé is as cool and classical as its marque siblings. There are, however, a couple of things to niggle the purist… a less than ideal seating position and some controls which seem cheap in such a car.
Some flaws inside
The interior of the luxury coupé is as cool and classical as its marque siblings. There are, however, a couple of things to annoy the purist. The seating position should be a bit lower, and not just for taller occupants, and the steering-wheel cannot be raised far enough. There are also controls which are familiar to us from Jaguar and Ford models but which are definitely out of place in an automobile with a price tag of 190 thousand Euros. These complaints are nevertheless quickly forgotten when at the wheel of an Aston Martin Virage in fine weather on wonderfully winding mountain roads taken at speed and giving the luck person at the wheel the enjoyment of a really great drive.
