RE: Ultra-rare manual Aston DBS Volante for sale
Yesterday
Ultra-rare manual Aston DBS Volante for sale
One of only seven RHD manuals built for the UK, and in the perfect spec, too...
It hasn’t been an easy start to the year for Aston Martin. The company recently posted losses of £189m in 2025, more than double that of the previous year, and reiterated plans to cut 20 per cent of its global workforce. Not only that, but the much-anticipated arrival of design genius Adrian Newey to its Formula 1 team - plus a works engine supply partnership with Honda - has so far resulted in a car that apparently shakes itself (and its drivers) to pieces long before completing a race distance.
However, escalating losses and a troubled F1 team aren’t an accurate reflection of the firm’s lineup. The DB12 and heavily reworked Vantage are vastly improved over their predecessors, while the Vanquish was hailed as “the best Aston Martin in modern history” by Matt B recently. That should tell you how good Aston’s current range is, because the company’s built some superb cars this side of the millennium. You’ll know how popular (and surprisingly attainable) pre-2017 Vantages are these days, and you’re getting one of the most characterful V12s of the 21st century in the likes of the DB9 and Vanquish. And what about the DBS? It’s still the bucket list Aston for many, especially one as tidy as this Volante.
When it comes to buying an old British performance car, most will suggest picking one of the later models as they will usually have most of the inevitable quirks ironed out. While the DBS arrived as a standalone model in 2007, it was essentially a heavily revised and sharpened-up version of the DB9. It was built on the same VH platform that underpinned a good chunk of Aston’s lineup during the '00s and '10s, and retained the same 5.9-litre (badged 6.0) V12 as the DB9, too. The upgrades were extensive, though, with a carbon fibre bonnet, front wings and boot contributing to a 30kg weight saving over the DB9, and it was the first Aston Martin to feature adaptive dampers. The engine, meanwhile, was dialled up from 456hp to 517hp, and paired with a Touchtronic auto or a six-speed manual - the latter being the standout item here.
We’d have to wait another two years to see the Volante, which introduced a retractable fabric top that could be lowered in 14 seconds. Not quite as rapid as the sub-seven-second drop tops Aston makes today, but the access you’ll get to the V12’s soundtrack will be well worth the wait. Obviously, a fair bit of strengthening was needed to compensate for the lack of room, so Aston dialled up the Volante’s chassis stiffness by 25 per cent over the DB9. That means it’s north of 100kg heavier than the coupe, though, again, you’ll be too busy listening to the 12-cylinder orchestra up front to really care.
It’s a real looker, too. Aston convertibles can be a bit of a mixed bag, but DBS Volante wears its soft top superbly, particularly in this glorious spec of Tungsten Silver over a Sahara Tan interior. What makes this example extra special is that the seller claims it’s one of just eight right-hand drive manual DBS Volantes ever made, and one of only seven built for the UK market.
So it’s finished in the right colour combo, has the right gearbox and looks to have been very well cared for by its three previous owners, too. Just 47,357 miles have been covered over the 15 years, and there’s a good chunk of Aston Martin service receipts to go along with it. You’ll need a spare £149,950 to get your hands on it, or £20k cheaper than a new Vantage with fewer cylinders and more nannying tech. Okay, so that’s hardly a fair comparison, but if you had to choose between the two, you’d be giving this the nod, right?
Discussion
Absolutely NO interest or Nod from me. My worst ever car ownership experience with this model of DBS.
Having covered just 1400 miles from purchase and still under timeless warranty AM and the dealership wanted to charge me 10K for two new front ceramic brake discs when the fix was a simple £8.00 brake rota bolt from Brembo. AM refused to obtain and fit one so I bought the nut & bolt myself and had the local Indy AM garage do it with just 30 mins of labour.
It was a pi*s take.
With customers service like that they deserve to be loss making and the brand has forever lost me.
Having covered just 1400 miles from purchase and still under timeless warranty AM and the dealership wanted to charge me 10K for two new front ceramic brake discs when the fix was a simple £8.00 brake rota bolt from Brembo. AM refused to obtain and fit one so I bought the nut & bolt myself and had the local Indy AM garage do it with just 30 mins of labour.
It was a pi*s take.
With customers service like that they deserve to be loss making and the brand has forever lost me.
I would echo - this but from their main showroom. Have been taking a DBS there for ten years. Last year tried to charge me three and half k for non existent paint repair. Then damaged my wife’s vantage and refused to correct it. Reported them to Trading standards. Absolute shysters and not the first poor experience from Newport P. That said have had good experience from elsewhere in network. Hard to see how they can continue bleeding money year after year and with an unsustainable debt pile. I think they will end up as yet another Chinese ‘pretend’ brand like Lotus making generic EVs No one wants. A shame but at some point even Stroll will give in to reality.
king stunning car. I’m afraid I do want this. 
.I too have suffered from the AM curse, but more along the lines of a big- ish hit on a Superleggera Volante, which really wasn’t that good to drive- £37,000 loss in a year.
It’s rather put me off for good.
As for this car, lovely, but 48,000 miles is no small amount and you could have taken my 2019 Superleggera off me with only 16,000 miles on it and saved yourself £32,000.
Strikes me there is a fair amount of Nicolas Mee tax in there.
Be aware/Beware.
It’s rather put me off for good.
As for this car, lovely, but 48,000 miles is no small amount and you could have taken my 2019 Superleggera off me with only 16,000 miles on it and saved yourself £32,000.
Strikes me there is a fair amount of Nicolas Mee tax in there.
Be aware/Beware.
wistec1 said:
Absolutely NO interest or Nod from me. My worst ever car ownership experience with this model of DBS.
Having covered just 1400 miles from purchase and still under timeless warranty AM and the dealership wanted to charge me 10K for two new front ceramic brake discs when the fix was a simple £8.00 brake rota bolt from Brembo. AM refused to obtain and fit one so I bought the nut & bolt myself and had the local Indy AM garage do it with just 30 mins of labour.
It was a pi*s take.
With customers service like that they deserve to be loss making and the brand has forever lost me.
You keep posting this every time you see an Aston Martin, and in doing so you demonstrate a deep misunderstanding of how car companies and the supply chain work. Let me pose you this question. If you had an Aston (I know, I know, that will now never happen as they have lost you forever - I can hear the tears being shed in Gaydon from where I type), would you expect to be able to go into the dealership and order one of the outer clutch discs from inside the 8-speed ZF transaxle? Or get one from Gaydon? No? It's the same thing.Having covered just 1400 miles from purchase and still under timeless warranty AM and the dealership wanted to charge me 10K for two new front ceramic brake discs when the fix was a simple £8.00 brake rota bolt from Brembo. AM refused to obtain and fit one so I bought the nut & bolt myself and had the local Indy AM garage do it with just 30 mins of labour.
It was a pi*s take.
With customers service like that they deserve to be loss making and the brand has forever lost me.
Now you're going to say it's nothing like the same thing, but let me help you understand why it is, using your bolt as an example. For any car model Aston Martin agree with the suppliers what the service-level parts will be, from the internals of the transmissions to the parts of the braking system. All of these individual service parts have to have part numbers allocated, prices agreed, packaging designed, space allocated in the parts department, and a supply schedule. If the parts require a larger part to be dissembled to effect the repair or replacement then there will have to be a service instruction in place with technical instructions on the disassembly, cleaning, replacement technique, lubricants, adhesives, torques, etc and any specialist tools supplied to all servicing dealers, as well as their technicians trained. The warranty of the larger assembly will have to be agreed and negotiated, as once a suppliers top-level assembly has been taken apart they may not want to pay if the part fails in the future and could possibly have been previously repaired incorrectly.
At this point you're going to say I'm being ridiculous and it was just a bolt, not the inside of an auto transmission. But the process is the same no matter the level of part. In the case of your bolt, Aston Martin had no agreement to buy it from Brembo, no part number, no way of ordering it, no way of getting it shipped to your dealer, no agreed repair method (do all the bolts have to be removed or can you replace the one? the mating surfaces cleaned? what with? if there is corrosion present is that acceptable? are the bolts single-use and do they all have to be replaced? or just the one? what is the torque? is there a threadlock compound required? is this a clean-room process?). Without all of this agreed with Brembo, in advance, if there is a problem with the disc in the future Aston Martin would be 100% liable and Brembo will walk away. If Aston Martin at a corporate level haven't agreed this and given the instructions, etc to the dealer and the dealer decides to fit a bolt to help a customer, then the dealer will be in breach of their agreement with AML and they would be liable should the disc fail in future. So the only approved method for AML to fix your bolt issue was to replace the disc.
By getting a bolt yourself and going to "Fred in a shed" to get them to replace it (without establishing a root cause and if any of the other bolts should be replaced) you short-circuited all of the above corporate processes and accepted the responsibility for obtaining the part and the consequences should your repair fail.
As to why the repair wasn't covered by Timeless? That's an entirely different issue, Timeless is essentially an insurance policy, not an extension of the original manufacturer's warranty so it would depend on the terms in the agreement you accepted when you took out the policy with respect to consumable items, like brake rotors. I have no idea whether the bolt should have been covered - you'd need a lawyer to review the policy terms.
I know you will probably pooh-pooh all of the above and I've probably wasted my time, but I'd finish this by paraphrasing the words of Oddball (as played by the late, great Donald Sutherland) "Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves. Why don't you dig how beautiful it is? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?"
Now go and drive whatever car you own and enjoy it
Edited to add: I have no direct knowledge of your car, your dealer, the agreement between AML and Brembo or on the specifics of replacing a brake rotor bolt but I do have almost an entire career in automotive engineering in OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, so for the sake of argument let's just say all the above is just a semi-educated guess provided purely for entertainment purposes
To stay on-topic I'd better say that I think the Vanquish 2 is a stunning car but I can't understand the fetishisation of the manual transmission in what is meant to be a continent-crushing GT. Can you get a manual Bentley? Exactly.
Edited by LTP on Tuesday 17th March 09:50
LTP said:
wistec1 said:
Absolutely NO interest or Nod from me. My worst ever car ownership experience with this model of DBS.
Having covered just 1400 miles from purchase and still under timeless warranty AM and the dealership wanted to charge me 10K for two new front ceramic brake discs when the fix was a simple £8.00 brake rota bolt from Brembo. AM refused to obtain and fit one so I bought the nut & bolt myself and had the local Indy AM garage do it with just 30 mins of labour.
It was a pi*s take.
With customers service like that they deserve to be loss making and the brand has forever lost me.
You keep posting this every time you see an Aston Martin, and in doing so you demonstrate a deep misunderstanding of how car companies and the supply chain work. Let me pose you this question. If you had an Aston (I know, I know, that will now never happen as they have lost you forever - I can hear the tears being shed in Gaydon from where I type), would you expect to be able to go into the dealership and order one of the outer clutch discs from inside the 8-speed ZF transaxle? Or get one from Gaydon? No? It's the same thing.Having covered just 1400 miles from purchase and still under timeless warranty AM and the dealership wanted to charge me 10K for two new front ceramic brake discs when the fix was a simple £8.00 brake rota bolt from Brembo. AM refused to obtain and fit one so I bought the nut & bolt myself and had the local Indy AM garage do it with just 30 mins of labour.
It was a pi*s take.
With customers service like that they deserve to be loss making and the brand has forever lost me.
Now you're going to say it's nothing like the same thing, but let me help you understand why it is, using your bolt as an example. For any car model Aston Martin agree with the suppliers what the service-level parts will be, from the internals of the transmissions to the parts of the braking system. All of these individual service parts have to have part numbers allocated, prices agreed, packaging designed, space allocated in the parts department, and a supply schedule. If the parts require a larger part to be dissembled to effect the repair or replacement then there will have to be a service instruction in place with technical instructions on the disassembly, cleaning, replacement technique, lubricants, adhesives, torques, etc and any specialist tools supplied to all servicing dealers, as well as their technicians trained. The warranty of the larger assembly will have to be agreed and negotiated, as once a suppliers top-level assembly has been taken apart they may not want to pay if the part fails in the future and could possibly have been previously repaired incorrectly.
At this point you're going to say I'm being ridiculous and it was just a bolt, not the inside of an auto transmission. But the process is the same no matter the level of part. In the case of your bolt, Aston Martin had no agreement to buy it from Brembo, no part number, no way of ordering it, no way of getting it shipped to your dealer, no agreed repair method (do all the bolts have to be removed or can you replace the one? the mating surfaces cleaned? what with? if there is corrosion present is that acceptable? are the bolts single-use and do they all have to be replaced? or just the one? what is the torque? is there a threadlock compound required? is this a clean-room process?). Without all of this agreed with Brembo, in advance, if there is a problem with the disc in the future Aston Martin would be 100% liable and Brembo will walk away. If Aston Martin at a corporate level haven't agreed this and given the instructions, etc to the dealer and the dealer decides to fit a bolt to help a customer, then the dealer will be in breach of their agreement with AML and they would be liable should the disc fail in future. So the only approved method for AML to fix your bolt issue was to replace the disc.
By getting a bolt yourself and going to "Fred in a shed" to get them to replace it (without establishing a root cause and if any of the other bolts should be replaced) you short-circuited all of the above corporate processes and accepted the responsibility for obtaining the part and the consequences should your repair fail.
As to why the repair wasn't covered by Timeless? That's an entirely different issue, Timeless is essentially an insurance policy, not an extension of the original manufacturer's warranty so it would depend on the terms in the agreement you accepted when you took out the policy with respect to consumable items, like brake rotors. I have no idea whether the bolt should have been covered - you'd need a lawyer to review the policy terms.
I know you will probably pooh-pooh all of the above and I've probably wasted my time, but I'd finish this by paraphrasing the words of Oddball (as played by the late, great Donald Sutherland) "Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves. Why don't you dig how beautiful it is? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?"
Now go and drive whatever car you own and enjoy it
Edited to add: I have no direct knowledge of your car, your dealer, the agreement between AML and Brembo or on the specifics of replacing a brake rotor bolt but I do have almost an entire career in automotive engineering in OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, so for the sake of argument let's just say all the above is just a semi-educated guess provided purely for entertainment purposes
To stay on-topic I'd better say that I think the Vanquish 2 is a stunning car but I can't understand the fetishisation of the manual transmission in what is meant to be a continent-crushing GT. Can you get a manual Bentley? Exactly.
Edited by LTP on Tuesday 17th March 09:50
Re the featured car, I have normally no interest in modern supercars, last one I really like is a Ferrari F40, but this is a stunning looking car, id happily have one, would probably prefer the auto version but wouldn't be too choosy. Can imagine this on a European road trip. Absolutely sublime.
LTP said:
wistec1 said:
Absolutely NO interest or Nod from me. My worst ever car ownership experience with this model of DBS.
Having covered just 1400 miles from purchase and still under timeless warranty AM and the dealership wanted to charge me 10K for two new front ceramic brake discs when the fix was a simple £8.00 brake rota bolt from Brembo. AM refused to obtain and fit one so I bought the nut & bolt myself and had the local Indy AM garage do it with just 30 mins of labour.
It was a pi*s take.
With customers service like that they deserve to be loss making and the brand has forever lost me.
You keep posting this every time you see an Aston Martin, and in doing so you demonstrate a deep misunderstanding of how car companies and the supply chain work. Let me pose you this question. If you had an Aston (I know, I know, that will now never happen as they have lost you forever - I can hear the tears being shed in Gaydon from where I type), would you expect to be able to go into the dealership and order one of the outer clutch discs from inside the 8-speed ZF transaxle? Or get one from Gaydon? No? It's the same thing.Having covered just 1400 miles from purchase and still under timeless warranty AM and the dealership wanted to charge me 10K for two new front ceramic brake discs when the fix was a simple £8.00 brake rota bolt from Brembo. AM refused to obtain and fit one so I bought the nut & bolt myself and had the local Indy AM garage do it with just 30 mins of labour.
It was a pi*s take.
With customers service like that they deserve to be loss making and the brand has forever lost me.
Now you're going to say it's nothing like the same thing, but let me help you understand why it is, using your bolt as an example. For any car model Aston Martin agree with the suppliers what the service-level parts will be, from the internals of the transmissions to the parts of the braking system. All of these individual service parts have to have part numbers allocated, prices agreed, packaging designed, space allocated in the parts department, and a supply schedule. If the parts require a larger part to be dissembled to effect the repair or replacement then there will have to be a service instruction in place with technical instructions on the disassembly, cleaning, replacement technique, lubricants, adhesives, torques, etc and any specialist tools supplied to all servicing dealers, as well as their technicians trained. The warranty of the larger assembly will have to be agreed and negotiated, as once a suppliers top-level assembly has been taken apart they may not want to pay if the part fails in the future and could possibly have been previously repaired incorrectly.
At this point you're going to say I'm being ridiculous and it was just a bolt, not the inside of an auto transmission. But the process is the same no matter the level of part. In the case of your bolt, Aston Martin had no agreement to buy it from Brembo, no part number, no way of ordering it, no way of getting it shipped to your dealer, no agreed repair method (do all the bolts have to be removed or can you replace the one? the mating surfaces cleaned? what with? if there is corrosion present is that acceptable? are the bolts single-use and do they all have to be replaced? or just the one? what is the torque? is there a threadlock compound required? is this a clean-room process?). Without all of this agreed with Brembo, in advance, if there is a problem with the disc in the future Aston Martin would be 100% liable and Brembo will walk away. If Aston Martin at a corporate level haven't agreed this and given the instructions, etc to the dealer and the dealer decides to fit a bolt to help a customer, then the dealer will be in breach of their agreement with AML and they would be liable should the disc fail in future. So the only approved method for AML to fix your bolt issue was to replace the disc.
By getting a bolt yourself and going to "Fred in a shed" to get them to replace it (without establishing a root cause and if any of the other bolts should be replaced) you short-circuited all of the above corporate processes and accepted the responsibility for obtaining the part and the consequences should your repair fail.
As to why the repair wasn't covered by Timeless? That's an entirely different issue, Timeless is essentially an insurance policy, not an extension of the original manufacturer's warranty so it would depend on the terms in the agreement you accepted when you took out the policy with respect to consumable items, like brake rotors. I have no idea whether the bolt should have been covered - you'd need a lawyer to review the policy terms.
I know you will probably pooh-pooh all of the above and I've probably wasted my time, but I'd finish this by paraphrasing the words of Oddball (as played by the late, great Donald Sutherland) "Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves. Why don't you dig how beautiful it is? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?"
Now go and drive whatever car you own and enjoy it
Edited to add: I have no direct knowledge of your car, your dealer, the agreement between AML and Brembo or on the specifics of replacing a brake rotor bolt but I do have almost an entire career in automotive engineering in OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, so for the sake of argument let's just say all the above is just a semi-educated guess provided purely for entertainment purposes
To stay on-topic I'd better say that I think the Vanquish 2 is a stunning car but I can't understand the fetishisation of the manual transmission in what is meant to be a continent-crushing GT. Can you get a manual Bentley? Exactly.
Edited by LTP on Tuesday 17th March 09:50
Back on topic, excellent car and a proper grand tourer I reckon.
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