This is my 1987 Aston Martin V8 Volante in British Racing Green, with magnolia hide piped in green. I bought the car in March 2000 (with 43,000 miles on the clock) from Straight Eight in London. Our first child was due in November, and I reckoned that if I didn’t buy it then, I might have to wait a long time after that before being able to justify buying one. I previously owned a 1980 V8 Coupe, (bought just before my wedding for similar reasons!). I had loved the V8 since seeing it at the Earl’s Court Motor Show as a child. Also, Victor Gauntlett’s Pace Petroleum headquarters were in my home town and, as a child, I would regularly see V8s and later, a Winchester Blue Lagonda, driving around the town.
I am the third owner. Shortly after buying the car I found Tim Butcher who had recently set up Trinity Engineering. One of the first things he did was an unleaded conversion and returned the exhaust system to UK spec. as the car had spent time in Switzerland. Tim has looked after it ever since, and it is funny to think that I first took my eldest son to Tim’s original garage in a car seat, and he is now about to be 24. The car has its original paint, however the soft top roof was replaced, some years ago, by the late craftsman Lincoln Scott. The mileage is now up to 71,000 miles, showing ‘reasonable’ use over the the period. We recently returned from a 1000 mile trip around Champagne, Burgundy and the Loire. In 2007 I drove to Le Mans (in Nicholas Mee’s group). That was the year that Aston Martin won the GT1 class with DBR9 009 – quite a moment.
More recently, I won second place in the ‘People’s Choice’ at Simply Aston at Beaulieu (losing to a Silver Birch DB5) and came second in the ‘Touring’ category (voted by the Motoring Committee) at the 2023 Midsummer Drive In at the Royal Automobile Club at Woodcote Park. Although I have never formally entered one, some time ago, we went to an AMOC concourse at Waddeston, where Tim Cottingham (astonmartins.com) took a particularly good side-on photograph of the car. Subsequently, on a visit to the Aston Martin factory in Gaydon, I was surprised and delighted to see that photograph on the ‘timeline’ in the reception area as the representative for the V8 Volante. D643 UGP is very much part of my family.
My wife and children all love it (despite the V8 only being a 4 seater, we had a third child!) and I have vowed never to sell it. As well as the sheer beauty (which I think is being appreciated more and more at the moment) and the sound of the engine, we all love smelling of the Connolly leather after a drive (I can’t go on a sneaky drive without my wife knowing for the same reason!).