This weekend, the Power Beauty Soulmates (a dutch Aston Martin club) visited Zwolle, to have dinner at the famous 3-star restaurant De Librije. Because of the nice weather, the amount of members that actually arrived in their Astons in this time of the year was surprisingly high. Here’s some quick photos I took of the Astons present:
Yesterday, just like last year, my wife and I participated in the the Droomrit voor het Leven event, a charity event for children with serious health problems. My wife driving our Cobalt Blue V12 Vantage Roadster, while I drove our Fire Red V12 Vantage.
I am going to make two big trips with “Agent #002”, my Cobalt Blue V12 Vantage Roadster. First to Scotland, from June 14 to 21, with the Dutch Power Beauty Soulmates club. Then in July, from the 17th to the 22nd, Aston’s Centenary Rally “1000 Miles to London”. And for these two special trips, Agent #002 is getting a special outfit, a spectacular temporary wrap. Monday next week is wrapping day, at WrapMyRide.nl. I will be posting pictures to our Facebook page throughout the day, so that you can follow the wrapping process from start to finish. Just to get an idea, here’s what we did for last year’s Power Beauty Soulmates trip to Italy. (this year’s wrap is going to be more spectacular though 🙂 )
Here’s a quick video my wife shot on the Autobahn, while driving back from the Nürburgring 2 weeks ago. Me and my wife in my blue V12 Vantage Roadster chasing a friend driving my red V12 Vantage, on the German Autobahn. Reaching speeds up to 270 km/h. Fun!
Here’s a video of the Centenary Parade Lap on the Nordschleife last Sunday, prior to the 24 hours race, with 107 Aston Martins! (This video was shot from my blue V12 Roadster, with my red V12 Vantage right behind us)
Last week, on Tuesday, I participated in the Aston Martin on Track day on the Nürburgring GP Strecke. Since I was driving on the track most of the day, the only photos I was able to make (and included in my report of the day) were rather static pit-lane photos. Luckily, Aston Martin had several professional photographers document the entire day and I have just received a large batch of nearly 300 photos. I am going through them now, making a selection for an upcoming “Astons on the track” post. But for now, here’s some photos of my Fire Red V12 Vantage on the track (these were easy to spot as it was the only red Aston present 🙂 ):
It finally happened, my first track day in an Aston Martin! Last Tuesday, this year’s series of Aston Martin Big 5 events was kicked off with the track day at the Nürburgring. A last minute sign up (monday morning!) and suddenly I found myself driving my V12 Vantage on the GP Strecke, together with 30 other Aston Martins.
It’s official: Aston Martin has stopped the production of my favorite Aston: the V12 Vantage. Two weeks ago, on Friday April 19, an official communication was sent to all dealers, that no more orders for the V12 Vantage (the Coupe that is) were being accepted.
I have just returned from a great trip in “Agent #002”, my Cobalt Blue V12 Roadster. Six days of driving, from Amsterdam to Monaco and back, 3,000 kilometers in total! The trip was organized by Cars and Business, a Dutch car club for owners of sports cars and super cars of all brands, not only Aston Martins. 2 Astons (my V12 Roadster and a DBS Volante), 3 Ferraris, 3 Mercs, 3 Porsches, 1 Audi and 1 Rolls, driving from the Netherlands to Luxembourg, through France, through Switzerland, then Italy, back to France, to finally arrive in Monaco. So please excuse the occasional german or italian cars appearing the pictures below 🙂
At last Saturday’s Spring Event, a nice piece of tarmac had been prepared for drifting. So I took the Fire Red monster and tried my best. I have some experience with drifting, in several different cars (Porsches, several different Astons, my BMW 1M, etc…) and have become moderately good at it. I had never tried in a V12 Vantage though, so this was an excellent opportunity. However, it turned out that this certainly isn’t the easiest car to do a controlled drift in. The short wheelbase, the enormous amount of torque from the V12 on the rear wheels… Even my drift-instructor had trouble getting this beast under control on the wet tarmac. Anyway, here’s a video of my attempts, shot by TwinCharched, using two GoPro camera’s attached to the car, combined with some external footage.