Aston Martin DB5 Review

How Does It Drive?

With plenty of power, a short-shifting five-speed gearbox and disc brakes all round, the Aston Martin DB5 has the foundations to make sense of the performance and goes, steers and stops well enough to make it a viable car to enjoy on modern roads.

The engine, rightly, takes centre stage, with a crisp growl that opens up into a proper bellow as the revs rise, the brawny power delivery making it exploitable in pretty much any gear. For those more accustomed to modern cars, the heavy steering may take some getting used to; the DB5 is a more physical car to drive than the later DB6 with its option of power steering.

While the ride is firm there’s also quite a lot of body roll to deal with, the DB5 being a car you drive with due deliberation rather than grab by the scruff of the neck. Performance still looks good today, with 0-62 in the hot-hatch category for the standard car and quite a bit quicker in triple-Weber Vantage spec.

What’s Good?

Like you need to ask! The DB5’s balance of muscularity and elegance are the perfect expression of what Aston Martin is all about, the sense that this is a car for gentlemen (if not necessarily gentlemanly behaviour) evident in every angle and detail.

True, it’s a degree of separation from the racing success of the DB4 GT and Zagato, to which those of a sportier persuasion may be drawn. But the DB5 is still a fast, powerful car more than capable of transcending those iconic on-screen appearances in its own right. It’s also the kind of car to score nods of approval from everyone who sees it, not just the petrolheads. And the feelgood factor of being seen in it will be second only to that of actually driving it.

Symbolically it’s also nice that the DB5 represents the diversity of the industry at the time, given it’s powered by an engine designed by a Polish engineer, styled by Italians yet somehow at the same time unmistakably English in its character.

What’s Bad?

Well, everyone wants one and they only made so many. Never a cheap car in its day, the Aston Martin DB5 is now up there at the elite levels of the classic car world and, as a result, likely to end up in the hands of matching numbers fetishists more interested in showing it off on clipped grass lawns than actually enjoying it for what it is. Which is a crying shame, because cars like this should be driven, and driven properly. But there comes a point where they cease to be cars and instead become commodities to be traded between collectors. That makes living the dream all but unobtainable to anyone on a real-world budget, while the restoration costs of bringing a car up to the standards the market expects will be astronomical, and way beyond the means of your average classic car fan.

Which Model To Choose?

Given the DB5 was only built for a couple of years and, even then, in small numbers there’s not a whole lot of choice to ponder, and in reality it’s going to be down to finding the best one you can at whatever budget you can afford. Of the 1,059 total production it’s reckoned 60-odd were built to the more powerful Vantage spec in period (some may have been upgraded to this since) while 123 of them were convertibles.

Purists would probably prefer the coupe – or ‘saloon’ in Aston Martin’s official description – but the soft-tops are apparently coveted in the market. Rarest of all are the shooting brakes built by Radford, of which apparently 12 were made. Our choice? We’d be happy with a standard DB5 saloon. Perhaps in any colour other than Silver Birch, just to be different.

Specifications