GIVING IN TO TEMPTATION

Early DB9s can be irresistibly cheap-but be on your guard

- JOHN EVANS

How does a V12 Aston Martin DB9 for the price of an average-mileage, four-year-old, Mk7.5 Volkswagen Golf GTI Performance sound? That's the opportunity awaiting someone with £22,000.

Obviously they couldn't be more different and, as a sage once said, buy a DB9 cheap, pay twice. Still, almost twice as powerful, three times as many cylinders, over a second quicker to 60mph and looks that will give you neck ache from turning back to admire it. As 2030 looms and new V12s drink in the last-chance saloon, a cheap DB9 is stupidly tempting - running costs aside, of course.

The 2+2 GT was launched in 2004 and bowed out in 2016, so even the youngest ones are now seven years old. It was the first Aston to be built at the company's new Gaydon works. In terms of modern manufacturing equipment and processes, the plant was a world away from Aston's Bloxham factory, where the DB7, the DB9's predecessor, had been built.