Pre-Owned Aston Martin Buyer's Guide - Things to know when buying a DB9, Vantage, Rapide, DBS, etc.

The British are

know

n for many

things

, rock and roll, comedy, science fiction, imperialism and of course padmi, would you have any Gray Poupon? We are talking about luxurious and very expensive cars and Aston Martin is perhaps the most desired of all these British brands because of this bomb type. The longest-running and most successful product placement in film history has made Aston Martin the gentleman's sports car, and unlike Ferrari or Lamborghini or even Porsche and Aston Martin, it's the kind of car you can drive without hiding your face on the scale of idiot supercar that Aston Martin tends.

To rank fairly low and this means people will actually talk to you at traffic lights and in car parks, accessibility is one of the best aspects of owning an Aston Martin and I've

owned

two over the years; The first was a 2009 v8 Vantage Roadster and I currently own this 2014 Vanquish Volante. Additionally, for the last seven or eight years I have run the Aston Martin Owners Club for the entire South Central US, as well I

know

a lot of people with these cars and what we did was we got together and created a

guide

, basically a list of

things

that we thought people should consider before

buying

a used Aston Martin.

I'm going to talk only about the previous generation of cars. I'm talking about cars made between Now, around 2004 and 2016, these are known as VH platform cars. The VH platform was installed on Martin's aluminum chassis. All of the previous generation cars were built on that, except for the 177, which was built on a carbon fiber chassis, and the Signet. I'm not talking about the Signet but we will talk about the v8 and the v12 Vantage the db9 and the Virage the DBS the Rapide and of course the Vanquish there are several resources that I would recommend you use to search for your Aston Martin and The first of which is the Martin website about used Aston Martin.

Don't worry, it will give you a list of almost every used Aston for sale at every dealership around the world. I recommend this as your first stop because it's always safer to buy a used Aston from an Aston dealership than one where they've probably looked at the car. Cars that have major problems or have been red-flagged by Aston Martin will generally not be accepted by dealers for trade or consignment. Some of the used Astins are eligible for an extended warranty if you buy them from the dealer and I'll talk more about that later, but also the dealer will probably know the original owner and most likely have had it serviced, so They will be able to inform you.

Learn more about the car's history and show maintenance files. Another great resource is the DuPont registry at DuPont registry com. Many of the cars featured in this listing will be the same as those featured in the Aston Martin listing, but it will also include a large number of cars sold by private owners or sold by other car dealers who obtained them as a trade-in. You can also search eBay Motors at ebay.com motors, which again will have many duplicates of the car listings on other sites, but is still a good resource for locating used Astins, regardless of whether you buy your Aston from a dealership.

Aston Martin or elsewhere, have it checked by an authorized Aston Martin mechanic. I can't emphasize that. You might know some guy who's good with cars, but I can tell you he won't have a clue what to look for in one of these. You really need to get someone who knows these cars to look at them now. It could cost you around $600. Take it to the dealership and have them do a proper full evaluation, but believe me, it's money well spent overall and this is pretty obvious. It's best to find the younger version of whatever car you're looking for, of course, price varies.

It increases quite a bit for each model year, but the younger the car, the less likely it is to have problems, and although the model may be the same, Aston Martin tends to make major updates to cars every three years. Either the last Volante db9 will come off the production line, for example, or it is very different from the db9 Volante z' that came out first. Generally speaking, Aston Martins are very reliable cars, now they are not like Lexuses, where you go to drive one hundred and thirty thousand miles and absolutely nothing ever happens, but they are still very reliable.

My old 2009 Vantage Roadster v8. I had those five and a half years. I put about 22,000 miles on it and during that time absolutely nothing major. went wrong now the Vanquish here on the other hand was kind of an exception because

when

I bought this new it had a lot of things wrong but they were very unique to this car because I know three other people with this car and none of them had the problems I had, luckily all the problems were fixed under warranty, the cars were fine, in fact I trusted them implicitly, it never left me stranded on the side of the road.

I have driven it on multiple cross country roads. In fact, about a year and a half ago we took a three-thousand-mile trip from Texas to Connecticut and back, and we did that entire trip with a nine-liter bottle of champagne in the back and the only thing that went wrong. Did you need to replace one of the tires on the way home? That said,

when

something goes wrong with these cars it can be quite expensive to fix, for example on the older Vanquish they made in the early 2000s, if you needed a replacement windshield from one of those cars it could cost you between thirteen and fifteen thousand dollars and that's assuming you can find the part, so you just have to remember that these are exotic cars, it's not a Toyota when you buy a used one. you really need to prepare yourself mentally to spend maybe ten thousand dollars over the next five years just on maintenance and maintenance, so first I'm going to just talk about general things that apply to all the older models that you need.

What you should look for, no matter what car you are interested in now, the first thing you should look for is the condition of the leather and trim. Aston Martins are known for not performing well in hot climates. The adhesives that Aston Martin uses simply don't hold up well to heat, so it's quite common for trim to come off and for leather to delaminate or peel off. Both of my Astins had this problem and all Aston owners here in Texas know that you never leave your car baking. the sun in the middle of summer, so I always ask if this car was parked outside in the middle of summer, where was it stored?

I have a friend who had a Vantage v8 and he drove it as his daily driver every day to work and that was here in Texas and they left it outside uncovered and after only a few years, well the last time I saw his car, everything Its dashboard was destroyed, it looked like someone had attacked it with a razor blade, the leather was peeling off, it was split. a total loss, it was really a disaster, everyone here in Texas knows you don't do that to these cars if you have to drive them in the middle of the summer, park them under a tree and for the love of God open a window so that the interior does not reach 140 degrees.

Now keep in mind that Aston Martins are built by hand and as Jeremy Clarkson used to say, hand built is just another way of saying the door will fall off and what that basically means is that these cars are They will have more inconsistencies in the panel gaps, they will have more squeaks and rattles than a robot-built car. It's just part of the process, but sometimes these things can be more than acceptable, for example last year there was a Vantage S v12. that was for sale and I looked at it and it had an absolutely huge gap and a huge area right here between the A-pillar and the fender, there must have been a 1/3 inch gap, it was such a big gap that you could actually , I see the frame of the car below and how that car passed inspection at the factory.

I'll never know, but I guess when you build cars by hand your standards may be a little different, so anyway when you look over the car. Make sure there are no gaps that are unacceptable, but know that variations in gaps are normal for these cars and you may hear more squeaks and rattles than you would expect. These cars have very low ground clearance and at one time or another every Aston owner has bottomed out their car, so you'll always want to get it up and have the underside inspected to make sure there are no problems. Once I hit rock bottom, I doubted my Vantage so much that a four-hundred-fifty-dollar air intake box broke.

To replace the entire VH platform, Astin came in a convertible variant, the Vantage had the roadster and all other models had the Volante. These convertible mechanisms are very complicated. Make sure you can lower and reverse the top several times without alignment issues. or strange noises, also be sure to check both your headlights and taillights. Now obviously check to make sure they work, but also make sure there's no excessive condensation in there, a little bit of condensation, some moisture that goes away when it's hot outside. It's probably normal, but if you see large drops or standing water, it's probably a sign of a bigger problem.

Aston Martin paint jobs are considered to be the best paint jobs in the entire automotive industry, it is a time consuming process to paint these cars and as such it is very expensive to repaint them a few years ago a friend of mine needed me to They had the hood repainted and it cost over six thousand dollars just for the hood. Now all cars will have rock chips in the front, that's inevitable, but what? What you look for when inspecting these cars are more serious problems with the appearance of peeling paint, large chips, and most importantly, be sure to inspect the car in sunlight because then you will see if there are swirls in the paint.

Someone does a poor job washing the car if they use a dirty rag or maybe polish it with the bad buffer that can leave swirls everywhere. A few years ago, a guy who didn't detail his car to a friend of mine. I know what he was doing he used an electric shock absorber on the car and completely demolished the clear coat. I mean the car looked horrible after the guy was done with it and had to spend thousands of dollars to replace everything, another commonly reported problem with these cars is a check engine light or a check emissions light, many Sometimes this is caused by something simple like simply not having the gas cap tightened enough, but in rare cases it can be a sign of a more serious problem with the fuel system, sometimes it's an O2 sensor, sometimes it's a leak elsewhere this car when new had a leak in the carbon filter and had to be replaced if it was not under warranty it would have been a very expensive repair so make sure the firmware is Also sometimes the firmware updated in These cars may cause their emissions lights to come on, this is due to the difference between emissions requirements here in the US and abroad, so if you see a light on make sure you know why it is on. lit on something people have been reporting on older VH platform cars as sometimes the various air struts can fail and need to be replaced.

These are the struts that keep the hood and trunk open and sometimes the doors, so open everything, make sure everything opens and stays open When the warranties on these cars expire, many owners will choose to do annual maintenance at places other than the dealership and that's okay most of the time because let's be honest, it costs $1000 a year to get oil changes done at the dealership. It costs a fraction of that to take it somewhere else and it's generally fine, a lot of people do it without a problem, but if you're

buying

a used car, ask where the maintenance was done and how often it was done because you want to make sure the correct fluids were that the correct filters were fitted and that they were all done according to the Aston Martin maintenance program most of the VH Astin platform came with a glass key and a plastic key sometimes multiples of each This car here came with two of these glass ones and two of the plastic valet keys when you buy a used car make sure you have all the keys and that they all work because these keys are extremely expensive to replace the last general tip that I will give you give you is regarding mileage, you might be thinking that fewer miles is better and that's usually correct, but these cars like to be driven, if you see a car that's five years old and only has 1,000 miles on it, you might want to keep looking because It means that those cars have probably been sitting idle for most of their life and that's just not good for these cars.

My rule of thumb is that an Aston should get around a thousand miles a year, so when you see a five-year-old car, go for it. I'm sure it has 5,000 miles or more on it and I'm also wondering if all these miles were accumulated and they once made agreat road trip and then sat in a garage for four more years. You really want to know the answer to that because an idle Aston is not a happy Aston, so now let's talk about the specific models starting with the Vantage, which was of all the VH platform cars the most numerous and affordable.

Now one thing to note is that every Vantage with VH platform has a manual gearbox, no matter if it is a stick shift car or a sport shift car with paddle shifters, it still has a manual gearbox that has a clutch and clutches on the Vantage tend to need to be replaced every 20,000 to 30,000 miles, the clutch and The smooth V8 Vantage went out at exactly 20,000 miles and back then it cost me a little over $4,000 to replace that clutch, but in These days what people tell me is that it can cost between $7,000 and $7,500 to replace that clutch, so if you're looking to buy a used Ad

vantage

, be sure to ask if this is the original clutch.

Has the clutch been replaced? If so, when and that will give you an idea of ​​how much time you have left on that clutch before you have to shell out something. enough money and replace it now, generally speaking the transmissions in these cars have been reliable for most people, however we have seen a few problems arise here and there, they are usually minor problems that people have, sometimes they drive and they lose the ability to enter certain gears. We have seen this happen several times in each case. It's been a very easy thing to fix, it's not a big deal, but when you test drive the car, check it every year, it should change quickly. straight into that gear and stay in that gear if you're having trouble getting into gear, shifting too slowly or slipping out of gear, you may need a new clutch or it could just be one of these other minor problems that They are easier to fix Now, a final comment on the gearboxes is that I always recommend people buy a 2009 or newer Vantage and the reason is that from 2006 to 2008, first of all, they had a smaller engine, 4 .3 liters instead of 4.7. liter V8, but they also have an older version of the sport paddle shifters, sport shift, that's on the O 9 and later as a much better transmission.

Also, if you can afford it, get a 2010 or newer Vantage S because they have seven speeds. One last thing to know about the Vantage, sometimes the gas cap won't open. This is a problem that almost every Vantage owner has had at least once and they encountered it on two separate occasions, so on two occasions they had to fix it. but there is a little spring there, sometimes it just goes out. I'm not sure what exactly is happening but the gas cap won't open so when you inspect the car make sure the gas cap opens properly up to db9. the Virage, the DBS and the Rapide are doing well, there really isn't much to look for in them because we haven't really seen any common problems with those cars, really all you have to look for are the general things I mentioned.

Back in the day, things like leather and trim, most of those cars came with regular automatic transmissions, so you don't need to replace any clutches. There are a handful of stick shift variants that will need the clutches replaced, except those with automatic transmissions. incredibly reliable cars, we just don't see any common ground with things going wrong with them, so there's really nothing special to pay attention to right now. That being said I will recommend that if you can get a db9 GT, the last db9 I drove was a 2015 db9 GT and in 2015 the db9 was basically a winner and handled amazingly with the Rapide.

If you can afford to get the reps, the extra horsepower is worth it and that car is easily the nicest 4-door performance car ever made and them. If you are the rarest VH platform that Aston finds on the used car market, when it comes to the Vanquish there is really only one additional thing to look out for and it was a problem that existed only on the 2012 to 2014 model year cars, The problem was in the PR buttons and buttons that control the manual steering wheel in reverse and neutral. There was a problem with these cars where sometimes, in some people's cars, you would press one of those buttons and it would cause the whole set of buttons to collapse on the dashboard.

They didn't do a recall for some reason, they just waited for people's cars to have this problem and then they would fix it. This car never had that problem so it was never fixed and since there was never a recall it means if it happens it's over. It's up to you to pay to have it fixed, so if you're thinking about getting one of these cars, make sure you press all the buttons, make sure they're solid, and make sure they don't work. The only other recommendation I give. What I will do with the Vanquish is I highly recommend you get a 2015 or later car and get a vanquish s if you can, because it's awesome, but a 2015 or later, and the reason is that the older model cars, well, They had one, let's say, less. than an excellent six-speed transmission, that's what this has never been very happy with the six-speed.

They put an 8 speed in the 2015 and newer models and believe me the 8 speed makes all the difference in the world. It cut a huge amount from 0 to 60 times better fuel economy and the car just drives much better so if you can afford it on the 2015 Vanquish or newer the last thing I'm going to talk about is the warranty now if you buy a New Aston Martin comes with a three year unlimited mileage warranty you also have the option to purchase an additional one or two years now if you purchase the extended warranty when you purchase the car it is a price you also have the option to purchase the extended warranty later during your initial warranty period, but it will cost you a little more now if you are buying a used Aston and the warranties have already run out, if you bought it from an Aston Martin dealership you may still have the option of getting a year or two of warranty for the car but it will cost you an absolute fortune, for example a week ago a friend of mine bought a 2015 Vantage S v12 and he told me that the first year warranty on that car was It will cost six thousand nine hundred dollars to get the two year warranty years.

Nine thousand dollars. Well, I told you not to do that, just assure yourself that the car only had a little over five thousand miles on it, so the chances of something going wrong. the car that costs over nine thousand dollars and is something that the extended warranty covers with pretty slim odds. Most people don't get the extended warranty. It really just doesn't make financial sense. It's not a good bet. Don't do it like that. conclusion Great Aston Martin cars, the used market is fantastic at the moment, you can get great deals if you are going to get one, do your due diligence, check the paint, check the leather, check the upholstery, make sure everything opens and close properly, just look at it.

All common sense stuff if you have any questions or leave them below. We also have a written version of this

guide

found on our website for Aston Martin owners in the AMOC Texas organization and our members will update this list over time as we learn. new stuff on how the VH Astin deck is aging so check there to see what the latest info is anyway as always thanks for watching, see you next time.