CarBrandLogos archive · Aston Martin · 1994

Aston MartinDB7

Built in a borrowed factory on a borrowed platform, and it kept the company alive.

Photo: Calreyn88 · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in Aston Martin history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Aston Martin DB7, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Aston Martin DB7 V12 Vantage - Flickr - The Car Spy

Origins

By the early 1990s Aston Martin was building a few hundred cars a year and losing money on most of them. Ford, which had taken control in 1987, wanted volume, and the quickest route to it was already sitting inside the group. A stalled Jaguar sports car project, originally styled under Keith Helfet, was handed to Ian Callum at TWR and reworked into an Aston; underneath it used structure and thinking derived from the Jaguar XJS.

Aston Martin DB7 V12 Vantage - Flickr - The Car Spy · The Car Spy · CC BY 2.0

Design and engineering

Production began in 1994 at Bloxham in Oxfordshire, a plant built for the Jaguar XJ220 and standing idle. The launch car had a 3.2-litre supercharged straight-six from Jaguar's AJ6 family, with an automatic or a five-speed manual, and was priced far below anything Newport Pagnell had ever offered. In 1999 the DB7 Vantage arrived with a 5.9-litre V12, which is the version most people picture and the one that gave the car the performance its looks had been promising.

Aston Martin DB7 V12 Vantage - Flickr - The Car Spy · The Car Spy · CC BY 2.0

In production

Callum's body did the heavy lifting commercially. It read as an Aston Martin at a glance while owing nothing to the wedge-shaped Virage, and it aged well enough that the shape survived nearly unchanged for a decade. Around 7,000 were built to 2004, more than Aston Martin had managed in the eighty years before it. That is the whole point of the car: it turned a specialist into a manufacturer, funded the Gaydon factory, and made the DB9 possible.

2003 Aston Martin DB AR1 by Zagato · Mr.choppers · CC BY-SA 3.0

At a glance

The facts that define it.

Units built

7,000

Engine

3.2&nbsp

Designer

Ian Callum

Body

2-door coupé

Technical specification

The DB7, in detail.

Production: September 1994 – December 2004; (7,000 produced)
Class: Grand tourer (S)
Body style: 2-door coupé; 2-door convertible
Layout: Front-mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive
Engine: 3.2 L AJ6 supercharged I6; 5.9 L Aston Martin V12
Transmission: 4-speed GM 4L80-E transmission; GM 4L80-E Automatic transmission; automatic (I6) ; 5-speed Magna PT#Longitudinal orientation; Getrag 290 Manual transmission; manual (I6) ; 5-speed ZF 5HP30 transmission; ZF 5HP30 automati
Designer: Ian Callum; Keith Helfet
Assembly: United Kingdom: Bloxham, Oxfordshire
Manufacturer: Aston Martin Lagonda Limited