What’s the best looking car ever made? Options

[richee3]

I don’t care what you say. It’s the Aston Martin Vantage. Or the Vanquish. Or the DB9. Or the DBS. Doesn’t matter, they all look the same.




Regardless of incorrect opinions, I want to hear what you guys think is the most beautiful sheet metal ever.

[richee3]

I totally get it man, our Celicas are pretty overlooked for wheel fitment. I keep looking at the Celica in the garage and thinking I really need to revisit the fitment on the Caldina wheels but I can’t be too upset at Apex. A shop up in Canada that is the go-to shop for Astons worked with them to get fitment specific to the Vantage and DB9. We just gotta prove that there’s a market for fitment for the Celicas.

Speaking of that little shop in Canada…




I bought the VelocityAP clutch, headers, high flow cats, and tune for the Aston and kept meaning to do it myself but just couldn’t find the time. But while not having several weekends to get it all done, it kind of also felt like I was wasting time that could have been spent enjoying the car. So naturally I took a little road trip across the border. The mods don’t actually add or free up a ton of power (I estimate maybe a 40 hp gain in total) but it transformed the car’s responsiveness. The stock Vantage revs about as happily as a 1999 F150. Still a quick car but if you want to blip the throttle for a downshift, forget about it. That’s not a very sports car like trait and I really wanted to get that fixed. While I was there, they talked me into their X pipe as well, which they claim adds 20 lb ft of torque by itself. They have dyno sheets to back up their claim but I remain dubious that it does anything more than change the sound. The stock Vantage sounds great but it does sound like a relative of the Mustang. With all the exhaust work done, now it sounds more like an exotic V8. I don’t have any exhaust clips but I’ll try to get one soon.

On the way there, I had to stop and see just a few sights. Montana and Idaho had some hidden gems. Although I must admit that there’s something about a six speed Aston Martin, a V8 soundtrack, and perfect windows down summer weather that makes you choose to live in the moment rather than stop and play with a camera all day.




Side note, the front lip took heavy damage in northern Washington on back roads trying to get around the wildfires so that’s fit to be replaced again.

After leaving Canada, it was a must to head out to the west coast and go from Canada down to Mexico on the 101 and the PCH. Again, I couldn’t be bothered to take too many pictures but I snapped a couple.







Honestly that was one hell of a road trip. The Aston was flawless crossing mountain ranges, valleys, following rivers, crossing deserts, city traffic, open highways, endless switchbacks in Northern California, rain and shine, never missing a single beat. I’ve owned the car for four years and only put 3,000 miles on but but with that trip, I did 5,000 miles in 12 days. I wanted to head back up to the Bonneville salt flats on the way back and open the car up but Speed Week was going on so I’ve decided to save that for the next road trip.

All in all I spent a reckless and irresponsible amount of money to get this car set up for the trip but once I sent out, all of it was forgotten and it was all money well spent. Can’t take it with me and now that I’ve crossed ten US states and a Canadian province with the car, there’s no better way I could have spent the money.