ASTON VALOUR

Aston’s 110th birthday present to itself is a machine so old school it has a wooden gearlever and recycled geography teacher upholstery. Analogue heaven, or expensive anachronism?

WORDS OLLIE KEW

PHOTOGRAPHY MARK FAGELSON

The One Man and His Dog revamp was looking promising

IT WON’T START

Bloody hell, not today Aston. Please. Dip the clutch pedal again (remember those?). Waggle the gearlever (and those?). Rerun the trousers denoting the lozenge that Aston Martin calls a ‘key’ is present. Definitely pressing the unresponsive glass starter button hard enough to crack the surface. Come on. Pleeeeease start.

It probably only took a grand total of three seconds to figure out the Aston Martin Valour refuses to be woken until the driver squeezes the clutch and depresses the brake pedal while prodding the starter, but it feels a heck of a lot longer until the deafening silence is broken by a long starter motor whine then a rousing V12 idle. Luckily the roads between Bala and Blaenau Ffestiniog in North Wales are empty this time of morning, so no one witnessed my ineptitude. Thought I’d share it, in the spirit of consumer advice.

In my defence, it’s been a long old while since any of us sat behind the ovoid wheel of an Aston and found three pedals and a stick to juggle. A perusal of the company archives says the last series production manual was 2016’s V12 Vantage S, a late in the day optional extra demanded by the collectors (and the likes of us) that manifested as what it would feel like to play Russian roulette with a 6.0-litre V12.

The seven-speed dog leg shift was infamously tight and the gates were closer together than two coats of paint, so the threat of a 565bhp money shift instantly converting the engine to steampunk confetti was constant. Since then, every ‘volume’ Aston has entrusted shuffling cogs to ZF’s ubiquitous eight-speed torque converter auto. Which is fine, if you like that kind of thing.

Something strikes me as the Valour lopes towards Snowdonia. Not a sheep. A thought. I’m enjoying this car and I’ve barely crested 60mph. It’s rare a month passes these days where we don’t bring you along a car brandishing a four figure horsepower tally, and if we haven’t experienced it at full chat, then we’ve failed you. But the Valour is gratifying without insisting there’s more to reach for. There’s no flat out FOMO. Shift to retune the pitch of the V12. Shift to enjoy the shift. Then shift again to better the previous best smoothest shift.

So how did we get here? The Valour’s existence owes plenty to a previous one off Aston for reigniting the manual fuse – the magnificent Victor. A bespoke commission from a mysterious Belgian buyer back in 2021, the Victor draped a 1970s Vantage inspired body over the all carbon skeleton and Cosworth-fettled vital organs of the One-77 supercar. That stunner was always hamstrung by its criminally laggy automated manual gearbox, so for Victor, Aston mercifully binned the actuators and paddles and supplied a six-speed manual centrepiece. We drove it. We adored it and thirsted for more.