Bespoke, bonkers, brilliant! We are excited and...
This site uses cookies and related technologies for site operation, analytics and third party advertising purposes as described in our Privacy and Data Processing Policy. You may choose to consent to our use of these technologies, or further manage your preferences. To opt-out of sharing with third parties information related to these technologies, select "Manage Settings" or submit a Do Not Sell My Personal Information request.
Built for the Sultan of Brunei, this wide-body Virage Volante 6.3 is testament to the coachbuilder’s art. Earlier this year, Peter Tomalin made its acquaintance.
The 1990s were the last decade of truly handbuilt Aston Martins. An era when the wealthy customer could literally request anything their heart desired and the artisans of Newport Pagnell would craft it for them. And what you are looking at here is perhaps the ultimate expression of coachbuilding in the time-honoured style – but with the heart of a fire-breathing racing car. I’d better explain…
Just how special is this car? A mere 19 Virage Volantes were built to full 6.3 wide-body specification, and this was the very first of them. Indeed, such is its rarity and significance that it was selected for display at the 2023
Hampton Court Concours of Elegance. A monument, then, to the coachbuilder’s craft, but with an engine of massive, undeniable potency.
To rewind quickly, the regular Virage made its debut in 1988 as a fastback coupe. A Volante convertible soon followed, but initially as a two-seater only, which rather limited its sales prospects. The 2+2 Volante, with an additional two seats in the back, made its debut at the 1991 Geneva motor show and the order book quickly started to fill, though the first customer cars didn’t start rolling out of Newport Pagnell until early 1992. Which is when this car, chassis 003, first enters the picture. For the 1992 Geneva show, AML showed two Virage variations, a new Shooting Brake and the now fully productionised 2+2 Volante – and 003 was the very example that appeared on the show stand, although it looked rather different back then. Painted in retina-searing Ferrari Giallo Fly yellow with brown leather, it also appeared in the official AML brochures and publicity material of the time. But it would soon undergo the mother of all transformations. After Geneva it entered the workshops of the hallowed Customer Service Division (aka Works Service) where it became the first Volante to be converted to full, 6.3-litre, wide-body specification. The customer? No less a figure than the Sultan of Brunei.
The wide-body Virage 6.3 – in both coupe and Volante forms – has long been the stuff of Aston legend. Essentially it was Works’ answer for customers who found the standard Virage a touch under-endowed performance-wise and a touch underwhelming visually (the supercharged Vantage version was still some way off at this stage).
There was certainly nothing remotely shy or retiring about the 6.3. Bodywork, engine, chassis, gearbox and brakes all received major attention to create a car that put Aston back on the supercar map. Central to the conversion, of course, was the 6.3-litre engine, originally conceived and developed by renowned specialist RS Williams in the late ’80s, drawing on experience gained with the Nimrod Group C racing car. The V8 was bored and stroked from the familiar 5340cc to 6347cc and there were new Cosworth racing pistons, a longer-throw forged steel crankshaft, reprofiled camshafts and gas-flowed ports. For the Virage application, the catalysts were ditched and the Weber-Alpha electronic fuel injection tweaked to suit. There was some new exhaust pipery, too, starting with some rather fine-looking tuned manifolds.
The result was 465bhp and 460lb ft of torque (vastly up on the standard car’s 330bhp and 350lb ft), putting the Virage 6.3 on a par with Lamborghini’s V12-engined Diablo. Subsequent revisions, including higher-lift cams, lifted the power peak even further to a claimed 500bhp!
The cost of the engine conversion alone was £25,000 (the full upgrade package cost £60,000, or more than £120k in today’s money). But straight-line performance was now of an altogether different magnitude, top speed rising from 155mph to a claimed 174mph, the 0-60mph time dropping from 6.5sec to just 5.4sec.
In order to give the invigorated Virage a fighting chance of staying on the road, Works made major changes to the suspension, fitting firmer springs and Koni dampers, plus stiffer anti-roll bars and rose-joints in place of rubber bushes for tighter control and more direct responses. The regular 16in wheels were swapped for 18in OZ split-rims wrapped in custommade 285/45 ZR18 Goodyear Eagle tyres (255/60s on the standard car), and lurking behind the spokes were monster 14in brake discs at the front, grabbed by fourpot AP Racing calipers, also derived from the AMR1 Group C car.
All that beefed-up hardware meant the Virage had rather outgrown its original aluminium tailoring. The answer was to cut away the front and rear wheelarches, have substantially wider ones beaten by hand and grafted seamlessly back into the body before the whole car was repainted – in 003’s case in Emerald Green.
This bespoke brute would make an eye-catching addition to the Sultan of Brunei’s famous collection. Whether he actually drove it isn’t known – he did have one or two other Astons at the time! – but what we do know is that it returned to Newport Pagnell in 1998 for a full refurb and an upgrade to the latest technical specifications.
The car was then sold to its first UK owner in 1999 and sold again in 2016 to a collector who commissioned a bare metal repaint in the current fabulous Galloway Green with a new dark green mohair hood, plus a full engine rebuild by V8 specialists Oselli, the net result of which was a dyno-confirmed 489.6bhp. Be in no doubt about the potency of a fighting fit 6.3!
And earlier this year, just before the car was sold to its latest custodian by Nicholas Mee & Co, I was fortunate enough to experience it first-hand.
Before you slip inside, you simply have to spend a minute or two drinking it all in: those fetchingly swollen arches, the extended chin spoiler and the boot mounted aerofoil, the deeply dished, split-rim alloys...
It’s not exactly subtle, but boy does it have presence. If the exterior speaks unashamedly of performance, the cabin oozes pure luxury, from the plumply upholstered sports seats to the peerless wood veneers to the Alcantara hood lining. So it’s almost a shock when you squeeze the starter button and that mighty engine erupts into life with a full-throated roar and the lightest squeeze of the throttle has the revs flying around the tacho. There’s a racer’s edge here, a lack of inertia that suggests a balance and lightness to the engine’s internals to match its fire and fury.
With near-as-dammit 450lb ft of torque to handle, the transmission has to be suitably beefy. When new there was a choice of three-speed automatic, five-speed ZF manual or close-ratio six-speeder. This car has the five-speed ZF gearbox, with an RS Williams short-shift action, as fitted to many a classic V8 Aston. First is on a dog-leg, with the remaining four ratios in the usual H-pattern, which take a little acclimatisation but soon becomes second nature. The shift itself has a tight, mechanical feel, while the clutch pedal is, predictably, weightily sprung but takes up with pleasing progression. The only thing you have to watch is to keep a few revs dialled in to avoid stalling – not something you’d anticipate with 6.3 litres of V8 muscle under your right foot.
It’s actually a bit of a pussycat as you ease yourself in, with almost disarmingly light power steering, though the sheer size and weight of the car mean you exercise restraint until the road stretches out and the traffic clears. A mile or two of dual-carriageway allows you to open the taps and the Aston responds with real urgency, piling on speed and momentum as only a big, heavy, massively powerful car can. Fortunately the uprated stoppers feel more than up to the task of reining it back in again.
The further and harder you drive, the more you relax with it. The fingertip-light steering, a smidge unnerving at first, gains in weight and feel through turns; the suspension copes well with less-than-optimum surfaces, and there’s an underlying poise that allows you to take roundabouts and sequences of bends at a surprising lick. No, it’s never going to feel like a sports car, but for a super-luxury tourer with a direct bloodline flowing from those classic Aston V8s of the ’70s and ’80s, it acquits itself well.
But it’s the engine that makes by far the biggest impression, for its fabulous soundtrack, its abundance of power and torque, and its sheer vitality. I’d expected it to feel muscular – how could it not? – but the way it revs and zings and rips the air apart is something else
From 3500rpm onwards it takes on another dimension,
power swelling as its rich V8 baritone grows and grows.
It really does feel like a racing engine trapped in a
beautifully appointed drawing room, and I don’t think
I’d ever tire of it.
You may have noticed that 1990s classics are very
much in demand right now, and from its tail spoiler
to its split-rim OZ alloys, the Volante 6.3 is a living
monument to the era of Britpop. For years, collectors
have homed in on the 1980s ‘Prince of Wales’ V8
Vantage Volante, arguably this car’s closest equivalent
in the Aston Martin family. But the simple fact is
that the wide-body 6.3 is both rarer and way more
powerful!
It is also symbolic of the end of an era for Aston Martin,
with the engineers and craftsmen (and women) of
Newport Pagnell bringing all their skills and experience
to bear on the last generation of great hand-built
Astons of the old school. What finer testament to their
talents than this bespoke brute of a motor car?
