Few cars have been more important to a marque than the Aston Martin DB7.
By the end of its decade-long production run, the DB7 had sold more than all previous Astons put together, and turned around the perennially cash-strapped company’s fortunes.
It was also drop-dead gorgeous.
For all the glory of the original DB series of cars, and the mighty but less loved V8s, Aston Martin was regularly on the verge of running out of cash.
It was no different when Ford came to the rescue with a 75% stake in 1987, and then took full control in the early ‘90s.
By 1993, the Virage and Vantage were the flagship models, both hand-built in small numbers at Newport Pagnell – and both prohibitively expensive.
Ford also owned Jaguar at the time, and new Aston Martin chief executive Walter Hayes took an interest in Tom Walkinshaw’s project XX, based on the abandoned XJS successor, the XJ41.
While Jaguar rejected Walkinshaw’s proposal, Hayes could see that it contained the basic ingredients of the cheaper, entry-level car Aston Martin was crying out for.
He formed Aston Martin Oxford with Walkinshaw’s TWR Group, and gave designer Ian Callum a simple brief.
“We photographed the most beautiful DB4s and DB6s we could find, stuck pictures up in the studio and said ‘like that’,” he said.
An instant classic
Hayes got exactly what he asked for – a beautifully sculpted body that brought those glorious designs of the ‘50s and ‘60s up to date. After a break of a quarter of a century, the DB6 finally had a worthy successor.
Giles Chapman, writing in Autocar in March 1994, described “a body of astonishing beauty – a classic sports car look with long bonnet, short boot and a hint of gently waisted haunches”.
Jeremy Clarkson, not a huge fan of the car to drive, said it was “one of those cars that you simply cannot walk away from without turning for one last look”.
“It’s like sitting opposite a stunning girl in a restaurant; you can’t concentrate on your food, and you don’t even notice that your wife has got up in a temper and left,” he added.
“As a driving machine it’s worth about £4.50. The name adds another 40p. The looks make it worth a million.”
Writing in Motor Sport in December ‘94, Simon Arron said there were “few, if any, cars on the road today that would pip the Aston Martin DB7 in a beauty contest. Fact.
“Subjective an issue as taste may be, the new Aston’s aesthetic qualities are inescapable. Its proportions are exquisite, its purpose unmistakable.”
Across the Pond, where the DB7 didn’t arrive until 1996, Car and Driver’s John Phillips said it was “bewitchingly gorgeous”, and to Motor Trend’s Randy Lorentzen it was “a paragon of grace and modesty in a world of loud braggarts”.
“The DB7 doesn’t exude arrogance like a mid-engine exotic, but projects a quiet mastery of the entire universe instead,” he added.
Road & Track’s Kim Reynolds wrote that the DB7 “may be the best-looking car in many, many years, a thorough and seductive blending of past Aston Martin themes updated into a modern and yet also timeless form”.
There were no dissenters – the DB7’s looks were worthy of the initials of David Brown, who owned the company between 1947 and 1975.
As Chapman wrote: “A machine to return the venerable Newport Pagnell company to the ‘DB’ tradition of gorgeous six-cylinder sports cars with a unique British flavour even the Italians couldn’t quite emulate.”
Not that it would be built at Newport Pagnell – with the Virage continuing in production there, the DB7 was manufactured at Bloxham, Oxfordshire, previously used to build the Jaguar XJ220.
You could buy the DB7 in Cotswold Champagne, Mendip and Quantock Blue, Cheviot Red, Brecon Anthracite, Pennine Grey, Malvern Silver, or Chiltern Green.
Aston Martin DB7 under the skin
Power for the new car was provided by the six-cylinder, 3.2-litre Jaguar AJ6 engine, with an added Eaton M90 supercharger to produce more power and torque than the much larger Aston 5.3-litre V8.
Re-engineered by TWR and Jaguar-Sport, the engine featured an all-alloy head, with four valves per cylinder and twin chain-driven overhead camshafts.
The single supercharger is the same as that used on the Jaguar XJR, but running at 40% more boost, resulting in a whopping 335bhp, and 360lb ft of torque at just 3,000rpm, endowing the DB7 with fantastic flexibility.
It was married to a choice of the 5-speed Getrag transmission or 4-speed GM 4L80-E automatic, both used in the XJS.
Built on a modified Jaguar XJS platform, and using the same wishbone suspension (with new springs, dampers, geometry and bushings), the DB7’s weight was kept down with judicious use of composites in the body.
Still, it wasn’t light, weighing in at 4,023lb, but could still shift to 60mph in just over five seconds on its way to a top speed in excess of 160mph.
Keeping costs down
Hayes made no bones about using parts from the Ford group to keep development and production costs down, in addition to the use of the XJS floorpan and AJ6 engine.
“The acquisition by Ford of Aston Martin and Jaguar has enabled it to use the resources of these specialist companies,” he said. “I know exactly where to go in Ford for anything we might want. And if you have the opportunity to use these facilities you’d be damn silly not to.”
The window switches and air vents were pure Mondeo, other interior knobs were from the humble Orion, and the interior door mirror switches from the Scorpio. The electric seat controls are from the old Jaguar XJ40.
The tail lights were shared with the Mazda 323F, the door handles with the 323 estate, the indicators from the MX-5, and the wing mirrors with the obviously non Ford Citroen CX.
In all, the car was developed for $30m.
DB7’s sumptuous interior
No matter that the DB7 shared some of its knobs and switches with bog-standard cars, the new Aston’s interior was an opulent affair.
Under Callum’s watchful eye, 29-year-old designer Neil Simpson created a sculpted shrine to hand-crafted Connolly leather, Burr walnut and Wilton carpet, without being ‘olde worlde’ and anachronistic.
Lorentzen, in Motor Trend, said that the “Aston Martin is better with wood and leather than any tree or cow could hope to be”.
Car & Driver’s Phillips said there were few experiences more acutely British than climbing into an Aston Martin DB7, “short of rowing for Oxford at the Henley Regatta, with a double Tanqueray and tonic balanced on your knee”.
“It smells like Prince Charles’s polo closet in there, but with fewer riding crops strewn on the floor.”
Not everyone was impressed. CAR’s Gavin Green acknowledged the “marvellous” Connolly hide and walnut woodwork, but wasn’t having the presence of switchgear from Ford in an Aston.
“Even the key looks like a Ford’s, and where you’d normally find the Ford oval on the key head you find an ovalised version of the DB7 logo to fill the space, which looks naff,” he bemoaned.
Driving the Aston Martin DB7
So the new DB7 looked the part, and most were happy with its interior appointments, but what did road testers make of it when they put it through their paces?
Most agreed that the DB7 wasn’t an out-and-out sports car like the similarly priced Ferrari F355, but it was an outstanding grand tourer with supercar speed.
Green, writing in CAR in December ‘94, didn’t like its gear change, which “feels like an Escort’s, only not quite as light”. Ouch.
But a big prod of the throttle showed him that the new Aston meant business.
“The slight whine and groan of the motor under part load is banished, replaced by a guttural roar that sounds like a Boeing 747 at take-off,” he wrote.
“The noise isn’t that refined, or even that nice, but you know that somewhere in front of your toes there is an engine that means business, and when you do activate the roar the car rushes to the horizon with renewed vigour, like a high-speed train building up to its maximum.”
Motor Sport’s Arron praised the car’s “seamless ability to pull away smoothly from as low as 1,500rpm in top gear without a hint of protest”.
“No matter what your speed, nor which gear you are in, it is constantly strong and progressive.
“The DB7 is more than just a pretty face. It is also comfortable, well appointed, enormously fast and, if the mood takes you, fun. The DB7 needed to be good. Make no mistake. It is.”
Phillips, writing in Car & Driver, described a “lovely feline supercharger howl”, the engine at full pelt emitting a sound “something like an industrial furnace on the high-speed setting”.
The rebirth of Aston Martin
After years of producing the very low volume, hand-built V8s – a kind of upper class muscle car for those with deep pockets – the introduction of the more svelte DB7 breathed new life into Aston Martin.
Autocar said that the DB7 joined “the McLaren F1 in re-establishing Britain at the cutting edge of specialist car making”.
Once 300 deposits of £10,000 had been received around the time of its unveiling, the order book was temporarily closed for the car that was first priced up at £78,500.
As such, it competed head on with the BMW 850CSI at £77,500, and was only a little more costly than the ageing Porsche 928 (£72,950) and less sporting Mercedes 500SL (£77,400).
The Bloxham production line was capable of manufacturing three cars per day, hand-assembled if not truly hand-built.
Given Aston had only previously produced 13,000 cars in its 83-year history, planned production of 650 DB7s a year was a staggering figure.
When Aston took the DB7 to America for the 1997 model year, the coupe was accompanied by a Volante convertible version, along with a claimed 600-plus new parts, of which 200 were also fitted to the coupe.
Changes included the addition of twin airbags and new switchgear, seats, steering, brakes and softer suspension, along with a steel bonnet.
More than 4,000 six-cylinder cars were sold, a company record, before Ford decided to take the DB7 upmarket with a beefier new engine.
Arrival of the V12 Aston Martin DB7
Aston Martin had been developing a V12 engine for some time before they opted to put it into the DB7, using Ford’s high-tech, Duratec 3-litre V6 as the basis.
But this wasn’t just two Duratec units welded together – Aston Martin’s engineers, with significant help from Cosworth, spent five years finessing their new, all-alloy 5.9-litre V12 before it debuted in a production car in the DB7 Vantage in 1999.
The intention was to sell the V12 alongside the inline-six, but such was the success of the former that demand for the six fell off a cliff. It was soon quietly dropped.
The Vantage engine produced 420bhp and 400lb-ft of torque, with power available across a wide range of revs.
Top speed was now 186mph with the TREMEC T-56 six-speed manual, or a speed-limited 165mph with the ZF 5HP30 five-speed automatic.
The sprint to 60mph could now be achieved in under 5 seconds.
“Only Lamborghini makes a V12 that sounds better,” enthused Autocar.
Car & Driver tested the Vantage Volante in 2001 against the BMW Z8 and Ferrari 360 Spider, and found a car that was “reserved, tailored, rich in clublike leather and wood” and which “spoils the passenger almost as much as the driver”.
Despite a traditionally British vibe, the magazine scoffed at suggestions that DB7 was “an old person’s car”.
“Not so. As the performance figures show, this convertible has the power and exuberance to run with the best. This is a car that cruises effortlessly at 120 mph while remaining rock steady. It would be our choice of the three for a 1000-mile dash across the European continent, which is what we did, bringing the car from its English homeland to meet its rivals in Italy.”
DB7 GT and DB7 Zagato
The final evolution of the DB7 was also the most powerful and sporting, the GT (manual) and GTA (automatic), with output up to 435bhp for the manual version.
Launched at the 2002 British Motor Show, the GT’s shorter final drive ratio resulted in dramatically improved mid-range acceleration.
Other changes were updated suspension, a mesh front grille, bonnet vents, a boot spoiler, new wheels and vented Brembo disc brakes.
Only 191 examples of the GT were built, plus another 112 GTAs, making them the rarest and most desirable version of the standard DB7 range.
A number of special editions were made over the years, including 50 Jubilee editions to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth, and 55 Anniversary Edition cars (out of a planned 100) in Slate Blue to celebrate the end of DB7 Vantage production.
But the most exclusive and dramatic DB7 of all was the Zagato, first seen at a preview for potential buyers at the premises of Gieves & Hawkes, an exclusive bespoke tailor in Savile Row, London.
Unveiled to the wider public at Pebble Beach, California a few weeks later in August 2002, the car was a throwback to an earlier collaboration between Aston Martin and Zagato – the DB4GT Zagato of 1960.
Based on a chassis shortened by 2.4 inches, the two-seater Zagato – 8.3 inches shorter overall – was clothed in a stunning aluminium body hand-formed in Italy.
It featured a huge front grille, a shapely rear end, and the hint of Zagato’s trademark ‘double bubble’ roof.
Just 100 cars were made, one for the Aston Martin museum, and 99 for the public, which sold out immediately.
Zagato also produced 100 examples of the DB AR1 (again, one for the museum), an entirely roofless roadster for the sunshine states of the USA.
Given the Aston Martin DB7 was widely regarded as a car of outstanding beauty, we’ll leave you to decide if Zagato made it better…
