Aston Martin Virage - Driving Experience

While we can question the place of the Virage in the Aston Martin line up, it's hard to find fault with the product itself. Scarily so, in fact. So good is the Virage that it predictably makes the DB9 appear somewhat passe. A little more unexpectedly, it also calls into question the wisdom of paying an additional £25,000 for the DBS. Depending on how you look at it, the Virage is powered by it either a tweaked version of the DB9's 6.0-litre V12 or a modestly detuned version of the DBS's similarly sized unit. Either way, it has 490bhp at 6500rpm and generates 420lb ft at 5750rpm, which slots it conveniently halfway between the 470bhp DB9 and the 510bhp DBS. Despite giving away a few kilograms to the DBS, the Virage is barely any slower in real-world scenarios. It rides a lot more quietly over poor surfaces thanks to adaptive electronic dampers and its Sportshift six-speed paddle-shift gearbox is also the superior item. Performance? You can expect to launch it to 60mph in 4.6sec and it'll only run out of puff at 186mph. As impressive as the numbers are, they give no clue as to how well sorted the chassis is, Aston having poured huge resources into getting the balance of the car fundamentally correct. With a perfect 50:50 weight distribution and a 'Sport' button on the fascia allowing the driver to select a sharper throttle response and faster gear changes, the Virage is no bloated boulevardier. Compared to the Newport Pagnell bruiser that first bore its name, the tactility of the current Virage is from another planet.

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Car and Driving | October 5, 2011

Tags:. .additional. .modestly. .virage. .detuned. .bruiser