All the way from south Lincolnshire to this glorious spot on the top of the North York Moors the consensus has been the same. A convoy such as this sends a ripple of interest along any high street, and the Aston is always the epicentre, the focus for swivelled heads. Anyone who hears the low, menacing growl of its V12 and catches a glimpse of the dramatic interior must surely imagine that motoring doesn't get much better.
There's every chance that it doesn't; the DB9 is a clean-sheet design that builds on Aston's experience with the Vanquish. Early reviews, including our own report from the launch in the south of France, have been overwhelmingly positive. Now we get to see what it's made of on the peculiarly demanding roads of the UK and, with the help of a few choice rivals, discover exactly what kind of GT it is.
At a fraction over £100K there isn't a direct rival for the 450bhp mid-front-engined, rear-drive DB9. Currently it's available only with an auto 'box, the six-speeder in unit with the rear differential, further helping weight distribution. Aston is often called the British Ferrari but while comparison with the 612 Scaglietti seems natural, the Ferrari is more potent, bigger and costs £70K more. There isn't a shortage of choice for the GT buyer with £100K to spend though, and our selection is designed to test the Aston's ability across the grand tourer spectrum, from engaging and rewarding cross-country sprinter to effortless high-speed continental cruiser.
The latter is represented by Bentley's aptly named Continental GT, which comes with a bewinged badge that's as evocative and iconic as the Aston's. At £110K the Conti seems almost a bargain given that it has a 552bhp 12-cylinder engine, four-wheel drive and a hand-crafted, leather-lined cockpit. Our second rival fills the role of a GT that can turn sports car when the mood takes - the £92k Porsche 911 Turbo, here in Tiptronic auto form. Another all-wheel-driver it develops 420bhp, though the recently announced Turbo S (News, 069) has an Aston- matching 450bhp. Completing our trio of adversaries is the £95k Mercedes SL55 AMG. Any number of stupendously powerful Mercedes are eligible, including the four-seat, V12-powered CL600 and CL65 AMG, or the SL600 and SL65, but the agile SL55 with its 493bhp supercharged V8 is our favourite sledgehammer Benz.
For me, day one begins in very fine style in the Bentley. We're all meeting at the Colsterworth services on the A1 near Grantham before heading on a demon test route that will take us along the Lincolnshire Wolds, over the Humber Bridge and into the East Riding of Yorkshire. There's no doubting the presence of the muscular Conti, though candy red paintwork and terracotta leather wouldn't be my choice. Swing the hefty door open, slide into the high-set driver's seat and take a few moments to savour the ambience. I reckon this is the best interior in the world; an unparalleled fusion of modern style, traditional craftsmanship and Bentley detailing. Perfect, smooth, double-stitch leather covers almost every surface, including the roof lining, the sunken dials have the most delicate chrome edging, there are 'organ stop' pulls for the vents and a knurled finish for some chrome switches. Considering the quality of the cabin and the concentration of hardware lurking beneath, it seems entirely possible that someone at Bentley has got their sums wrong and underpriced the Conti by £40k.
Push the starter button and the W12 fires up with a resonant, bassy rumble. It's a compact engine, effectively a pair of narrow-angle 3-litre V6s spliced together, and most of the time it's hard to determine the exact number of cylinders from its note. Not even 2385kg (the equivalent of three Lotus Elises) can smother the urge of this twin-turbocharged powerplant - find the throttle stop and you're pressed into the seatback by a stupendous, relentless force. So how come I'm a few minutes late for our breakfast rendezvous? I have to fill up on the way, and having fed the Conti almost £70-worth of unleaded, it's a shock to see the trip computer predicting a range of just 220 miles...
The DB9, SL and 911 and are already at the services with Bovingdon, Metcalfe and Morgan. I snaffle the Aston for the next leg and drop into the embrace of its low, sculpted, comfortable seat. The leather work isn't as detailed as the Conti's and there's a more natural variance in grain, but this is a bold cockpit with a strong, dynamic feel. The highlight is unquestionably the instrument pack whose dials appear to have been precision machined into the face of a solid block of steel. It's a fine place to be, though the quality isn't unrelenting as it is in the Bentley - the heater dials look and feel cheap.
The ignition key doesn't help, either. I thought the Bentley struck a duff note with its remote locking fob (much the same as any VW/Audi apart from the flying 'B' stuck to it) but the DB9 has the key from an old Ford. 'Keyless go' such as the Conti has can't come soon enough. Twist the key and the two square digital displays within the dials cycle through a few checks and project the words: 'Power, Beauty, Soul'. Err, right. Thumb the starter button in the centre of the dash and the 6-litre V12 whoops into life and sends a delicious shiver down your spine.
There's no selector lever for the auto 'box; P, R, N or D are selected by buttons either side of the starter. Once you're going, you can manually select gears by flipping the cast magnesium paddles behind the steering wheel. Getting going is potentially fraught, though; there's no creep built into the auto transmission and the throttle pedal is very sensitive. Press it as you might in any other auto and the DB9 lunges forward.
There's a harder, more sporting edge to the Aston than you might expect, and not just in comparison with the Bentley. The ride is firm and the direct steering is weighty, promising tight control and keen responses when the going gets twisty. Stretch your right leg and the V12 growls eagerly, its note like two classic British straight-sixes singing in unison, and the Aston surges forward on a strong, generous flood of torque. The gearbox is superb too, shifting so swiftly and smoothly up and down the ratios that you wonder why anyone has bothered making a manual with an automated clutch.
I know these flowing south Lincolnshire roads pretty well but a relaxed, brisk rhythm is proving elusive. Partly this is because the steering weight is a fraction too high, partly that the nose is distracted by undulations at the road's edge. The brakes lack feel and progression, too; they certainly have the power but the pedal is heavy and you can't modulate the pressure with sensitivity at the top of its travel.
With the Vanquish now elevated to the role of a more hardcore super-GT in the Aston range, I was expecting the DB9 with its 2+2 layout and auto 'box to be rather more effortless than it has so far proved. By the time we reach the outskirts of Horncastle and the next car swap, I've got to grips with its weighty controls and the need to caress its hair-trigger throttle at junctions, but only on the smooth sections has the DB9 felt at one with the road.
After the leather-lined luxury and style of the Aston and Bentley, the Mercedes feels rather more ordinary. With its lower waistline and optional Panoramic glass roof, it's an airy cockpit, but not an especially stylish or expensive-looking one despite the optional 'mystic blue' leather for the seats, door casings and instrument cowl. Also optional are the 19in split-rim AMG alloys (18s are standard) which fill the chunky SL55's arches. All together, including the fancy 'chromoflair' metallic paint, the options on this SL bump the price up to £106k. Mind, the Aston is loaded with a few goodies too, including satellite navigation, cruise control, tyre pressure and parking sensors, upgraded Linn hi-fi and special wood trim among others, adding £5215 to the price.
The heavyweight, off-beat woofle of the SL's supercharged 5.4-litre V8 is far from the cultured yowl of the DB9's V12, but this is one classy hotrod. Within a few hundred yards you appreciate its more supple ride and better weighted steering, and although it's a heavier car than the Aston, it doesn't feel it. There's an easy wieldiness about it that owes a lot to the roll-reducing ABC (Active Body Control) suspension, and you quickly gain the confidence to press on. Sure, there's precious little feedback through the large, chunky-rimmed steering wheel and you can sense that the folding hardtop construction compromises body rigidity but this is a car that can maintain a strong pace with seemingly little effort.
While paddles are the must-have of the moment, Mercedes equips the SL55 with soft-touch buttons on the back of the steering wheel, and they work beautifully. The auto 'box itself is creamily responsive if left to its own devices but switch to manual mode and you can throb along in top gear using just a couple of thousand rpm and the V8's deep well of torque. This mighty engine pulls strongly whatever the revs, and when it comes to overtaking its full-on thrust is staggering, more so even than the Bentley's.
Another petrol station, another car swap, and I'm at the wheel of the Porsche. It's clearly a smaller, narrower car than the others and plain and functional is the best description of its cabin, but it's surprisingly practical too - after the Conti, the 911 offers the most useable rear seats. They're small but an average-sized adult could put up with a half-hour run and small kids would be comfortable on long journeys, which is more than can be said for the Aston's rear seats; I felt like I was wedging myself into a leather-lined packing crate when I tried them for size.
Is the Porsche really a GT, though? Initially the ride suggests not. It may be among the softest riding cars in the 911 range but the Turbo is firm by most standards, and there's plenty of tyre noise, too. There is an upside, of course - it's perfectly weighted, gloriously tactile steering. There's tremendous feel to the brakes, too. Any car that reckons to be sports car and GT rolled into one has this level of connectivity to aim for.
It seems odd not to be changing gear manually in a 911 but the shifts of the regular, torque converter-style auto 'box are as polished as those of the others here. The rocker buttons on the front face of the wheel allowing manual gear selection aren't very ergonomic, though. Shifting up is fine but downshifts require an awkward thumb action. (It's possible to mistake them for the radio's remote volume control, too.) The flat-six seems audibly subdued at low revs and doesn't really stoke up until around 3500rpm, but once it has, this 911 feels ballistic. Lower powered than the others it may be, but it's also much lighter, producing the highest power-to-weight ratio. In isolation the SL feels stronger but with Jethro behind in the Merc, it's soon obvious that the Porsche has the edge.
As with all 911s, you take time to play yourself in and get used to the dynamics of the rear-engine layout. Basically it's a matter of building trust that the front end has more grip than the lightly loaded nose at first suggests. Trust established, the Turbo becomes a devastatingly effective ground-covering tool. And the odd thing is that after a few miles you're so absorbed by the precision, feel and feedback that the firm low-speed ride is almost forgotten when you dawdle through the next town centre.
Over lunch the DB9 is at the centre of conversation, and it's the same over dinner. After we've driven some more of our favourite roads, it's still dominating discussion. And so far it hasn't made the impact we anticipated.
'I thought the DB9 would match the individual strengths of the others, add a dash of sophistication and a sense of occasion, and walk this test,' muses Jethro. I think we all did. We've driven some wonderful, flowing A- and B-roads today yet none of us has yet got fully comfortable at the wheel of the DB9; none of us has really connected with it.
Concerns start with the steering. 'It feels heavy and confused,' says Harry. 'It gives the car a leaden feel,' adds Jethro, 'and it sometimes judders at parking speed which is a bit disconcerting.' The heavy brakes have sapped confidence too, and the chassis damping has been found wanting. 'It has a firm, crashy ride yet can't keep control of the body over big undulations,' complains Jethro. Harry says that at one point over the Moors he was having trouble hanging onto the tail of the Bentley, a car that weighs almost 600kg more.
The Aston has strengths of course, not least that magnificent, smooth and richly vocal V12 engine and a superb six-speed auto that makes the Merc's transmission feel a bit woolly. Oh, and not forgetting drop-dead gorgeous looks. This is a toned, subtly muscular, elegant coupe that makes the be-spoilered Porsche look dumpy, the Mercedes a bit chintzy and the Bentley like a saloon with a couple of feet chopped from the wheelbase. Crucially, though, each of the DB9's rivals has delivered exactly the strengths and compromises a buyer would expect. Only the DB9 has so far failed to deliver the Ronseal promise.
'The thundering SL is an honest and brutal dragster,' says Jethro, 'short on feedback but big on simple thrills. The DB9 tries to entertain on a more cerebral level with its sophisticated yowl, driver-optimised auto 'box and stiff, all-alloy construction. The very firm ride and aggressive throttle action tilt directly at the 911, which is a very risky target.'
There's always tomorrow, though, and another selection of the North York Moors' finest asphalt. So far we've all driven the cars on different bits of road, so tomorrow each car will tackle the same undulating 15-mile loop that includes smooth, wide A-road and bumpy, twisty B-road.
As expected, the Bentley relishes the open, flowing sections, and the shove from its 6-litre, twin-turbo engine is monumental. It feels quite absurd to be perched high in such splendid, hand-crafted surroundings, experiencing such colossal acceleration. Hints that these kinds of roads, or the even straighter freeways of Europe, are its preferred domain are apparent, most noticeably in the seats, which lack decent lateral support. That said, drop the auto 'box into sport, which locks out sixth and sharpens up the shift regime, and the Bentley feels keener and holds its mass in tighter rein, shuffling down the ratios as you slow for corners.
It can't defy physics, though, and when you steer into tighter turns you can sense the reluctance to change tack. When the surface beneath its plump tyres gets particularly difficult, the Conti's suspension doesn't deal with lumps and bumps with the degree of aplomb you'd hope for, either. There's no question of it deviating from its line but the front wheels shimmy in their arches as if the damping can't quite cope with their weight.
We admire it hugely as a luxury GT, though. 'It is essentially aloof,' says Jethro, 'but it nails the crushing, effortless GT thing so convincingly that it's very hard not to loosen your grip on the wheel, slide the lever into D and relax. Yet at seven-tenths it'll leave most things behind.'
'Despite being of mainly cast-iron construction,' jokes Harry, 'it seems to have absolutely no trouble latching itself to the rear bumpers of the other contenders whenever a straight bit of road presents itself. And every time you open the door and clamber in you can't fail to be impressed by the superb craftsmanship.'
Of all the ludicrously potent Mercs, the SL55 is the only one that seems to have any interest in engaging and involving its driver. I'm sure some owners will never discover this, content, Bentley-style, to simply summon up the massive, latent urge of the supercharged V8 on the straights. Sure, the steering doesn't brim with feedback but this two-ton coupe-cum-convertible handles with a certain flair. Once committed to a corner, it feels poised, balanced and comfortable, and it digs for grip when you pick up the throttle.
Leave ASR engaged and the SL will stay very tidy, allowing you to revel in the NASCAR soundtrack and mighty thrust of that force-fed V8 with impunity. If you're feeling more confident, pop the gearbox into manual mode, disable ASR and be ready for some playful oversteer. It's just a shame that the gearbox brain will fire in an upshift if the revs get close to the red line, which can really upset your style. The Aston will simply run against the limiter, which is much easier to cope with in such situations.
The surprise is that the ride of the SL55 is generally better than that of the Conti GT, more supple at low speed and less crashy over B-road bumps. There is a limit to its range, though, the rear running out of travel over high-speed undulations, and pressing the 'sport' setting on the ABC suspension doesn't cure it; if anything, it restricts travel further.
Still, it's a mighty effective ground-covering device, relaxing most of the time but loud, lairy and huge fun when you want it to be. 'It does inspire confidence,' says Jethro. 'In the dry it's got plenty of front-end bite and the tail stays remarkably well controlled considering the car's towering torque.'
'What I love about the SL,' says Harry, a one-time SL600 owner (previous version), 'is the way it can hide all its performance away and revert back into a comfy cruiser to loaf around in whenever the mood takes you. That's a class act.'
The Porsche, too, will amble around, claws retracted as it were, though as mentioned earlier there's an edginess, a tension to its ride at town speeds that is a constant reminder of its bias towards ultimate control. For a keen driver, it's a modest sacrifice. The same stretch of wriggling and writhing B-road that troubled the SL and Conti bothers the 911 considerably less, that low-speed choppiness more than compensated for by fabulous control. The Turbo is wonderfully able and you soon find yourself fully absorbed and engaged by the talkative steering and the feeling that the car is absolutely keyed-in to the road.
The harder you push, the better it gets, the rear-biased weight distribution there to be exploited, assisting the four-wheel drive to fully deploy all 420bhp without a hint of wheelspin. It's a great engine, too, this flat-six, delivering its spectacular thrust with a creamy, confident rumble. It seems unburstable.
At one point I find myself leading Jethro, who's in the Aston. I have a certain advantage in that I know the road better, but the greater advantage seems to be the Porsche. After a few miles I'm so focused on enjoying the 911 that I've completely forgotten that the DB9 is behind. Mind you, that's partly because it isn't in the mirrors any more.
When we meet up, Jethro looks exasperated. 'The Aston feels leaden. It should glide along that road but you just don't know where you are with it. Sharp ridges crash through the steering and the rear feels like it's on its bump stops, then over big humps the thing goes all floaty.'
There's clearly something amiss with the set-up of what should be Aston's best car to date, and we felt it in the example we drove last month too (Fast Club, 069). It's not just steering weight but response, too. On the fast, smooth section of our route the DB9 feels OK, but although it corners with strong grip and a roll-free attitude, there's isn't the feeling that the Aston turns enthusiastically, or that its chassis flows naturally into and out of a corner. The SL may lack steering feel but its poise in cornering tells you that the car is with you, while the feel and feedback of the 911 let you know how hard you're working the grip front and rear.
Throw in a few moderate undulations and the Aston becomes even less satisfying. It seems unable to cope with single-wheel bumps, the whole front end rocking over them, and the odd thing is that despite its substantial extruded aluminum chassis, the DB9 seems to flex over tough tarmac. All of which makes trying to exploit the long-legged urge of its howling V12 rather frustrating. We want to love the DB9 but the way it drives won't let us. As it stands, it's neither a great cruiser nor a confidence-inspiring driver's GT. 'Somehow it doesn't feel finished yet,' says Harry, glumly.
We brought along our three rivals in the expectation that the Aston would roll their best features together into one irresistible GT, but all three seem to be better resolved propositions than the Aston. The heavyweight Bentley isn't much of a driver's car but it is a fabulously refined, exceptionally well-appointed four-seat GT that also happens to be capable of 200mph.
Pound for pound, it's sensational. The Merc is also an appealing take on the GT theme, with a Jekyll and Hyde personality that allows it to be loafing cruiser one minute and bruising muscle-car the next. It can also transform from coupe to convertible inside a minute, further extending its appeal. Then there's the Porsche, the bogeyman of many a group test, which yet again sets the dynamic standard but is also remarkably practical and comfortable on the long haul.
There's a great car locked inside the DB9. On paper it's a winner, with its advanced aluminium superstructure, front-mid-engine/transaxle layout, glorious engine and superb gearbox. The driving experience simply doesn't reflect this though, which is immensely frustrating. Especially as less than ten minutes after you've stepped out of it, you drink-in those lines and find yourself being seduced all over again.
