When, around 2500 years ago, Sun Tzu came up with his famous line about the bodies of your enemies floating past if you sit by the river for long enough, he undoubtedly wasn't thinking of luxurious Grand Tourers from the early 21st century. But the same principle applies - in this part of the market the grandest are always humbled.
The sub-£30K DB9 has been with us for several years, but the earliest cars to fall to such a level almost always had obvious issues in terms of condition or spec or lacked the kind of history that provides reassurance in the face of a maintenance hungry V12. Yet in the last few months that has changed, with both significant numbers of early DB9s falling to the mid-20s, but also the rising percentage that - like this week's Pill - look like bets you wouldn't be barking mad to take.
Of course, many reckon that Brave Pill's role is to dig out the riskiest example of any car; they expect to hear ticking or smell burning as they look at the advert. That is often the case, but the financial peril of any middle-aged Aston is such that even an apparently solid example requires the sort of courage that gets odes composed or statues carved. You could save a couple of grand with an even cheaper example, but given our Pill's combination of a good colour and a full service history, you'd be a bit mad to.
It's no exaggeration to describe the DB9 as being the first modern Aston. The DB7 had sold in sufficiently healthy volumes to persuade then-owner Ford to sign some very big cheques, paying to create a new V12 engine and sign off on the bonded aluminium architecture that, in heavily modified forms, are both still serving the company today. The brutish Vanquish was the first car to combine an aluminium structure and the V12, being handbuilt in limited numbers at Aston's historic Newport Pagnell HQ. It was also fitted with a robotized manual gearbox with the manners of an angry attack dog and, these days, prices start at over £60,000.
The DB9 was much cheaper when it launched, £103,000 against the Vanq's £163,000, but also much more refined. It was the first car produced in Aston's spiffy new Gaydon factory, where it was constructed to much tighter tolerances than any previous Aston, and with much less use of big hammers. It also got the option of a civilised rear-mounted torque converter auto in place of the standard six-speed manual, something the majority of buyers went for.
Early critical reaction was - well, surprisingly 'meh' really. Praise for the styling was pretty much universal, and although Aston's then design director Henrik Fisker was officially credited with the DB9's handsome lines, everyone knew the vast majority of work on both it and the Vantage had been done under his predecessor, Ian Callum. But beneath the design a fair number of reviewers reckoned the basic car was a bit too soft and wafty, lacking the sort of iron-fisted dynamic focus they had been hoping for. It was criticism that led to the creation of a firmed-up Sport Pack, offered from 2006, with the base car also given progressively firmer chassis tunes throughout its long life.
Yet even in its softest form the DB9 was special, something close to an excuse-free Aston. The early car might have been lacking in the ability to nuzzle apexes or fondle high-speed sweepers expected by the most gung-ho road testers, but it was an extraordinarily talented at delivering effortless speed. One of my first drives involved taking a car from the UK to Germany for a comparison test, with tight deadlines demanding most of the drive out at night. The Aston's ability to devour empty Autobahn at an effortless 150mph cruise as the big V12 hummed away redefined my view of what "grand touring" actually meant, even if it did go on to lose an ill-matched contest with a 911 Turbo.
Okay, there were some obvious issues, even in 2003. Parts of the cabin felt low rent even then, especially the vast, plasticy greyness of the centre console. The sat nav was famously terrible, the DB9 getting a Volvo system whose screen wheezed slowly out of the top of the dashboard, and which had to be laboriously programmed using fiddly buttons behind the steering wheel. Despite the promise of two-plus-two practicality the cabin was cramped compared to a Bentley Continental GT, and nobody has ever ridden in the back of a DB9 without complaining. Yet compared to the Astons that had gone before, quality and usability were in completely different leagues.
None of which stopped the DB9 from running into a familiar Aston problem - outliving its welcome. After a strong start sales had begun to dip even before the 2008 financial crash pretty much collapsed them. A 2009 facelift brought more power and firmer suspension, but did little to boost the car's fortunes. Aston then muddied the water with both the DBS V12 spin-off and the short-lived Virage (remember that?), both of which made the standard DB9 look like a poor relation. While the basic car was tweaked and preened over the years the most striking thing about the last-of-line DB9 in 2016 is just how similar it looks to the 2003 original.
The DB9's long life has long created a huge spread of values; it was possible to get early cars for little more than £30,000 at the same time the last examples were being sold new for £100,000 more. But while there are many fine reasons to save up the extra required for a later car, early examples now look like outrageous value, especially given the smallness of the supplement they currently have over the much less advanced DB7. The big challenge, as always, is finding a good one. As a well-known Aston specialist once said to me - having shown a pile of maintenance invoices totaling well over ten grand on what was then a five-year old DB9 - "there are people who can afford to run Aston Martins, and people who think they can. There are many more people in the second group, and they're the ones you don't want to buy cars from."
Our Pill is a typical early example, finished in the Tungsten silver that was very popular in the early years and with a grey interior. It's an automatic - as most were - and although 72,000 miles is on the high side for an early DB9, that's mostly due to the UK's strange fetishization of barely-used exotics and the fact many owners seem terrified to actually use their cars. The vendor is a well-known upmarket dealer in Buckinghamshire and promises a full service history, although with no more details in the text. The MOT history backs the mileage, shows continuous use and proves the car to have suffered from very little to concern any of the testers it has met over the years - the last bit of red being a failed lamp in 2015. It's not in concours condition, the carpet is either worn or poorly cleaned and there seems to be a scratch on the rear bumper. But nothing some TLC wouldn't put right.
There's no such thing as a cheap to run Aston, of course - but a cheap-to-buy one does maximise the available headroom for when the bills start to arrive. And bring us to another Sun Tsu quotation too apt to be resisted: "victorious warriors win first and then go to war."
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