Aston Martin V8 Vantage v Jaguar XKR (August 2007)

Wet Dreams

MOTOR Magazine
August, 2007

Mother nature, you bitch. We book a winner-takes-all shootout over the Queen's Birthday weekend and you decide to end the drought with a monsoon. Not cool, especially when I've just been handed the keys to nearly $500,000 worth of UK's finest.

We'd reschedule, but borrowing an expensive sportscar is hardly like renting a DVD for the weekend; once it's booked, it's yours. Rain or shine. Blue skies or grey. With lives being lost as the highways turn aquatic up the coast, it's a disaster in every sense. But then, as we gaze pessimistically skywards at 5am on a Saturday morning, the irony slaps us wet in the face; we've got two English sportscars and the weather's just turned all English on us. A perfect theme for a photoshoot, then. So here we go, with umbrellas mounted and ponchos tied, it's time to find out which Pom splashes hardest.

In the black corner we've got Jaguar's all-new $228,300 XKR. An old man's car, I hear you cry. Not this time. With a revamped supercharged V8 producing 306kW and a new all-aluminium chassis, this is the fastest and most focused road-going Jaguar ever. And what presence. Those 20-inch rims, quad exhausts and huge snouted bonnet scream aggression. Sure, those headlights do have a whiff of Hyundai about them and, yes, those fog-light surrounds and that naff dodgem aerial are a little after-market, but view the XKR as a whole, especially in the flesh, it starts to make a lot more sense. It's also faster than you'd ever believe, but more about that later, because in the white corner, we've got Aston Martin's V8 Vantage Sportshift.

Let's not mess around. For me, this $253,250 V8 Vantage, with those anthracite rims and that white paint-job, is the best looking car in the world. Full stop. End of. Classier and more polished than a Porsche or Ferrari, yet still dramatic enough to sing in the same choir as a Lamborghini. You will, of course, have your opinion, but for me, the Vantage is a masterpiece of design that needed its ballsy colour scheme to really make it scream. The Aston PR guy was twittering something about a 283kW 4.3-litre V8 - an enlarged, but not supercharged version of that in the XKR - and new Sportshift 'box when I went to pick it up, but to be honest, I was too mesmerised by the car to catch it all. It's a privilege just to be looking at the damn thing. Imagine how I felt when the smouldering hot key fob was slapped in my grubby mits?

Hop in the leather-clad driver's seat, slot in the awkward key, give it a turn and watch as the crystal starter button glows a fiery red. All it needs now is a prod. Obliged. Cha… cha… baaaaarrrp. No kidding, even at tickover it sounds like the 'Zealanders are doing the Haka in the engine bay. Hit the dash-mounted ‘D' button to engage the Sportshift, stick the right boot in and wait for all hell to break loose. Waiting, still waiting, still waiting and then finally, the needle shatters through 4500rpm, the valves in the exhaust open, and a hand-grenade goes off in the engine. Boom. Hitting 100km/h in a smidge over five seconds, the Aston's no record breaker, but the way the whole car swells and rages with revs is utterly, utterly compelling. Away from every junction, youre inner child plunges the throttle to the mat, laughing demonically as the white bullet sings louder and belts harder than Pavarotti with a piano on his foot. It's only then you acknowledge your passenger, who's now scrunched up in the foetal position mouthing something about double-demerits weekend...

For those journalists whinging that it's not as quick as a 911, who gives a toss when you're cruising past the waving ladies looking cooler than Face from The A-Team? And it is for this very reason we didn't bring along a Porsche 911. Brilliant, for sure, but I doubt it'll make you feel the way the Aston, and to a lesser extent the Jaguar, do. And besides, I'm bored with Porsche winning all the trophies.

The Aston's not perfect. On rough surfaces the firm ride generates an annoying shake through the steering, and the less said about the optional Sportshift 'box the better. In a nutshell, it's a sequential manual gearbox with steering-mounted paddles to change the cogs rather than a clutch and a gearstick. Sounds exotic, it is exotic, but so is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and personally I would prefer to suffer a bout of neither. Next to the slick six-speed ZF auto in

the Jag, the Aston's transmission feels fragile and lethargic. Save yourself $8250, plump for the standard six-speed manual and it's a problem easily solved.

But, truth be told, it's impossible not to fall for the Aston. The looks, the noise, the presence, the sense of occasion, the way it struts and preens like a Friday night showman, is quite frankly a glorious achievement, especially for a company on the verge of closure less than a decade ago.

Yet no more of an achievement than what financially embattled Jaguar has accomplished with the XKR. I drove the standard XK recently and loved its supple ride and big, wafting GT credentials, but here, with the addition of an Eaton supercharger and a stiffened chassis, the big-gun is a stunner. With 560Nm of torque - 150Nm more than the Aston - we knew it was going to be fast, but the way it sucks up a great puff of air and sneezes you hard at the horizon is astonishing. Scary fast, explosive, effortless, with enough thrust to pull the britches over the head of the Aston and a BMW M6. Yet it does it with the minimum of fuss. You sit back in a big, lazy chair, the seat bolsters nudging rather than gripping, and you look out over a long bonnet while twirling that round leather thing in front of you. It's not the most engaging experience, and she might not be as athletic in the bedroom as the Aston, but crikey she still cooks a mean roast.

Photographer Paul Suesse described it as "an old man's car with huge bollocks", but I'm not sure that does it enough justice. Unlike the Aston, the XKR just goes about its business without bouncing up and down on its space-hopper shouting "look at me". And if I was tapping a far-away destination into either of the sat-nav systems, I would want it to be the black car's. The Aston's stiff ride would frustrate after a couple of hours behind the wheel, and as soon as there's no city dwellers to admire the pretty bodywork or be mesmorised by the V8's noise, the more boisterous Aston starts to make less sense. So for a day-to-day big-hitter, I'd go Jaguar every time. But a car for a weekend blat along the country lanes? Now that's a different story.

I'll admit I was a little surprised, but along ten kays of rain-soaked hairpins and Armco-lined switchbacks, the Aston was sensational. Engaging, pin-sharp, confident, everything you'd want in a $250K sports car. The XKR, on the other hand, with its softer ride and less-engaging steering, just couldn't keep up. It was still quick, but where the Aston‘s tight body control and flexible engine allowed you to stitch the straights and corners together in one smooth, syrupy motion, the Jaguar felt more comfortable breaking them down so that you gave it a good slug down the straights before jabbing hard on the well-assisted brakes, guiding it around the bends and then pointing and squirting all over again. For the Jaguar, the real fun starts on the straights; for the Aston it's in the corners. And that's the same story whether on road or track.

I'd not anticipated this result when we set out on this aquatic journey 16 long hours ago, but having paddled the two cars at the track, sloshed them around in the city and punted them along the highways, it turns out the XKR and V8 Vantage are two very different cars, both with very different personalities and different talents. The more composed Jaguar plays a better Pac-Man when the road is fast and the distances long, while the Aston's sharply honed chassis and smouldering looks are enough to win over even the most blinkered of Porsche devotees.

So which is it going to be; black or white? I'll be honest, for half-an-hour me and driver Thomas Wielecki cursed and whinged about the Aston's frailties around the city, and how the comfier, faster, smoother Jag would be the one we'd buy if it were our money. Then the bastard ruins everything when he asks which I'd be taking home for the night. Damn.

That'll be the Aston. Yup, the Jaguar's a great GT and more than a match for rivals from Mercedes and BMW, but try as you might, there's no stopping those primitive urges that still inhabit the pants, not the hat. Buy the Jaguar if you want a cool car with plenty of shove and the two (near-useless) extra seats, BUT, if you want to feel like a movie star each and every time you get behind the wheel then it has to be the Aston. Buy it, enjoy it, love it, because this V8 Vantage is the biggest stormer of them all

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