Rare Aston Martin V8 Coupe heads to auction (original) (raw)

Gallery 1996 Aston Martin V8 Coupe

The Virage-era Aston Martins are seldom seen on our shores, and there are a couple of good reasons for this. Even though Aston Martin offered this model stateside, most of them were produced at a time when the automaker was barely alive. To be sure, for most of the last 50 years Aston Martin was either treading water or underwater, but the first half of the 1990s is truly in a class all by itself: in 1992 Aston Martin produced a grand total of 46 cars -- a statistic difficult to appreciate today -- and production in adjacent years was similarly scarce. This makes the period between the old V8 cars and the DB7 something of a lost era for the marque.

In a few days one of these rare cars will roll across the auction block at Bonhams' Aston Martin sale, an annual auction in the U.K. that draws some of the rarest machines from Newport Pagnell.

The Virage debuted at the International motor show in Birmingham in 1988, back when there was a major auto show in the U.K., replacing the long-serving V8 model that had debuted in the late 1960s. The new Virage bore some passing resemblance to the Zagato-bodied V8 that was launched a couple of years prior, but in many ways it looked very different from what had come before. Powered by a V8 good for 330 hp the new model was narrower, a little more compact, lighter and undeniably sportier.

Much of the recipe, however, remained the same, as Newport Pagnell packed plenty of power under the hood of the coupe and cabriolet, and also plenty of luxury features. The Virage was renamed the V8 in 1994, and debuted in facelifted form in Geneva in 1996, remaining on sale for just another three years alongside the DB7.

Bonhams

This V8 Coupe has over 12,000 miles on the clock, but there aren't that many high-mileage examples out there either.

Hailing from 1996, this V8 Coupe is a low-mileage example finished in Antrim Blue over a Parchment leather interior, and is optioned with an automatic transmission, which is how more than half of the production run of this model was specced. The auction house notes that this car was sold new to Jersey and later moved to the U.K. mainland, first being registered there in 1998. The car received service from Aston Martin Works just recently, in 2017, receving a new air conditioning unit, a new fuel pump, a Le Mans-spec anti-roll bar, and new shock absorbers in addition to new tires and brake caliper work. The car now shows around 12,450 miles from new.

Bonhams estimates this V8 Coupe to bring between 70,000 and 90,000 pounds, which translates to a range between 91,000and91,000 and 91,000and120,000, and this is right about where good examples of this model in original condition have been trading in the past few years.

Demand for these cars is not particularly high at auction -- they come up for sale in the U.K. regularly despite their modest number -- but few of them have recorded mileage above the 50,000-mile mark. The lowish mileage here accounts for most of the wow factor, as does the fact that that it hails from a very low-production era for the automaker. When it comes to investment potential, these are still a far more solid bet than early DB7 models from the same era, whose values bottomed out long ago; there is no shortage of DB7s for sale from the first few years of production for the price of a cheap new hatchback.

Will bidders care much that this car is optioned with an automatic? We'll have to wait a few days to see how this example fares on auction day, when offered alongside a number of other Virage-platform cars.

Visit the auction website for the full list of lots and auction schedule.

Jay Ramey grew up around very strange European cars, and instead of seeking out something reliable and comfortable for his own personal use he has been drawn to the more adventurous side of the dependability spectrum. Despite being followed around by French cars for the past decade, he has somehow been able to avoid Citroën ownership, judging them too commonplace, and is currently looking at cars from the former Czechoslovakia. Jay has been with Autoweek since 2013.