![]() It has a Adaptive Damping System, Dynamic Stability Control, Electronic Brakeforce Distribution, Electronic Park Brake, Emergency Brake Assist, Hydraulic Brake Assist, Positive Torque Control, Torque Vectoring by Braking plus Traction Control. In terms of safety and security most boxes are ticked. It develops 375kW at 6000rpm and 675Nm of torque at 5000rpm. Sourced from AMG, so it’s really bloody good. The engine is an all alloy, quad overhead camshaft, 32 valve, 4.0 litre bi-turbo V8. Headrest Embroidery Aston Martin Wings Seating.Wheels – 20″ 10 Spoke Shadow Chrome Non-Diamond Turned.There were some optional extras on this car including: This car can be heard coming from several suburbs away. It’s a screamer, it’s just a shame you need a track to fully experience one of the great soundtracks. (In a show of faith, Ward and Hammerton sat inside for the first hosing.That engine, especially when the roof is down sounds most irate when in Sports or Sports Plus mode. The shower test mimics a car wash without the soap or brushes, blasting water at the roof to check for leaks. When it’s not racing around, the car’s in Aston Martin’s climate chamber, where it suffers a variety of nightmares. Once they’ve got an actual car to work with, the engineers head to the track with the roof closed, hit the 187 mph top speed, and open different windows to see how the fabric handles the beating. After all, Bond-worthy witticisms don’t sound as good when you’ve got to holler. They’re also watching for any sign of abrasion on the insulated, acoustic material that makes up the roof, which is designed to reveal no creases, even after hours sitting folded up.įor wind noise, they judge themselves by the “articulation index”: When you’ve go the roof up, do you have toraise your voice to be heard by your passenger, or crank up the volume to keep the Dvořák bumping? Then your loyal engineers have failed their mission. Just to make things extra tough, the higher-ups allowed even less NHV for the Volante than they did for the coupe. That means spotting and squashing any squeak or rattle from the roof’s many parts. ![]() They crank up the gust until the thing breaks, which, disappointingly, usually involves it just stopping mid-movement, not breaking off and flying away.Īll the while, they’re on watch for what the pros call NHV-noise, harshness, and vibration. They stick it in a wind tunnel to guarantee a driver in a very great hurry can open it up while driving at 31 mph (in case it starts raining and you simply cannot bear to pull over) and turning hard enough to pull 1G, as you might on Monaco’s curvier streets. To ensure the roof’s 500 parts, including a six-cylinder hydraulic actuator, can survive a lifetime on the road, engineers open and close it endlessly, aiming to cycle it up and down 6,000 times without a hiccup. Then it’s on to testing, which is where things get fun, creative, and just a bit barbaric. Because this is all happening alongside the development of the car itself, they have to settle for sticking these tops on what’s called vehicle bucks, which look like cars, just without wheels, doors, or an engine. Once they get a design approved,the team builds a series of 15 or so prototypes. Mercifully, the DB11’s roof does not pause as its closes, even for an instant. “We saw that as an error state, and wanted to fix it,” Ward says. The roof on the convertible version of the DB9, for example, would pause for a moment just before latching closed. That includes improving on what they saw in flawed designs. “We spent months looking at every single movement of the roof,” says Michael Ward, who led the convertible development. Because that’s what competing at this level of the auto industry requires when it comes to taming the beastly nature of the convertible. If you asked the overall-clad denizens of Ferrari, Jaguar, or Bentley about their convertibles, they’d likely say they put in just as much work. Which is why, way back in 2014, Aston’s engineering team started designing a folding roof that combines the opulence and desirability of the coupe with the can’t-beat-coolness of a convertible. Like everyone who buys $200,000 convertibles, Aston Martin customers don’t like the idea of making any sacrifices for the right to feel their Hermès scarves flap in the wind coming off the Riviera. The Volante, for those who don’t speak fancy, is the convertible version of the DB11, the excellent, $200,000 grand tourer that emerged from a new factory and major investments by an automaker that has spent the past century pivoting between glorious feats of engineering and bankruptcy. But that’s only because you don’t know how Aston’s engineering department developed the roof for the 2018 DB11 Volante. ![]() If you were asked to name the craziest thing that ever happened to an Aston Martin inside a laboratory, you’d likely invoke some witty repartee between James Bond and Q.
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