What’s the best looking car ever made? Options

[navseal345]

Little jelly. Let's hope that they approve that plate!

[Bitter]

You need to lower the altitude inside the intake manifold with some forced induction

[richee3]

A couple of pictures just because I agree that it needs a supercharger. The sports pack wheels suit it nicely but I’m eyeing some HRE’s.

[bryanf]

Gorgeous car.

[Bitter]

Oh no, it's been off road now. That's such a pretty silver on a pretty car, I do agree about some different wheels. They look good, well suited but lacking something. Too angular and sharp compared to the rest of the car?

[richee3]

I did a thing in Miami a few weeks ago. It was a 24 hour rental and all I can say is that it was one hell of a car. Jeremy Carlson once compared the Evo and STI on Top Gear and said that the Evo is the car you want to take to the track and the STI is the car you want to drive home. Well, I can definitely say that my V8 Vantage is the car I want to do some laps in but the DB11 is the car I want to take home. Of course that’s not in the budget, but one can dream. The DB11 was quick as hell but tame in the standard GT mode, just loud enough to make your presence known and driving it is almost telepathic. Want to change lanes? It’s already done. Pass the car in front of you? It’s already in your rearview. Whatever you even think about, it’s already done. However, put it in Sport+ and suddenly it becomes shockingly loud. Everything gets much sharper and more responsive, the transmission stays in the lowest possible gear, and you find that you need a lot of road if you plan on touching the throttle at all. People will definitely hear you coming well before you arrive and anyone near you will wish they had earplugs.

Takeaway: I need a Sport+ mode installed in mine. The V8 Vantage can be very shouty when you use the throttle but it’s quiet and smooth compared to the DB11. Also I need DB11 seats in my car.

[navseal345]

Nuts in reverse tach.

[richee3]

Get your forum posts while it’s up! I keep seeing it come up and go back down before posting, so I’ll throw a bit of a pointless post up.

Took advantage of a Black Friday sale to get some new wheels. I wanted HRE P101’s but bravely decided against paying for them. Instead I ended up with a set of Apex wheels. Admittedly I’ve never heard of them before this but they seem to be a popular choice in a few other communities and everyone says good things about them. Apex has done their research on the cars they make wheels for, including the Vantage, so these are made pretty specifically to fit. I’ll get some new tires in the spring and get these mounted then but I don’t particularly want to store more stuff longer than I have to. Small garage problems.

I also put in an order for a new clutch since the factory clutch is the known weak point of the car. The new clutch and flywheel are significantly lighter than the standard setup which should free up quite a bit of rotational mass and make the engine much more responsive. However, in order to replace it, you do have to drop nearly the entire exhaust, including the driver side exhaust manifold. The manifolds on this car, just like everything else, weigh a ton and are known to be very poor for exhaust flow. Naturally, I had to order a new set of headers since I’m already doing the work to replace them. Then of course what’s the point of putting a good set of headers on the car if the factory (incredibly heavy) cats are left on the car? Might as well order a set of 200 cell sport cats too…
My wallet hates me at the moment.
I’m not doing to dyno the car and will instead take Velocity AP’s word for it but these few upgrades should bump the car up to just over 400 bhp but more importantly, they will make it a more responsive car which I feel is the one area the car needs help in.

I’ll have it ready to hit the road in the spring and will have more pictures posted, assuming the forum comes back up before then.

[navseal345]

Soooo...

[richee3]

Got the tires mounted, went with 305’s in the rear and 275’s in the front. Also got a new front lip and new door panels because why not? Still working on installing the CarPlay, I’ll get around to finishing that… eventually. As for the clutch and exhaust, I’m waiting on some backordered parts, which are expected to be in mid March so I don’t have a huge timeline to get those installed before heading out to California in May. I had the arm rest and gauge cluster hood reupholstered to match the door panels to tie it all together. It feels like I’m making some progress even if I haven’t really accomplished much yet.

[navseal345]

[richee3]

Didn’t have much time to link any pictures a couple of days ago so I’ll do a photo dump here. I forgot to mention a few other things too, small in comparison but I guess everything adds up right now. The car came to me with some pretty ugly mystery floor mats so I picked up a set of Lloyd’s Ultimats for it. I haven’t looked into whether Lloyd’s makes anything for our cars but I’m very impressed with them. I also bought a second key and key fob since the car only came with one. Not cheap… very worth it.

Of course I’m still debating on getting a tune to make the most of the new clutch, headers, and cats when they get here. Part of me wants to get the most out of everything but part of me also thinks I won’t legitimately notice that last 20 hersepers, but I will definitely notice the bump in fuel economy. I also want to get the clear taillights from the later cars but they are $$$$$$$.

[njccmd2002]

Bump

[richee3]

My clutch is now back ordered until early April so… yay? That gives me six possible weekends (assuming no more delays) to get all of my mechanical work done before the big trip. That’s ignoring that I’ve had the dash torn apart since November for the CarPlay install… I’ll eventually get some work done on it.

[BonzaiCelica]

if I could, id throw a wrench at apex wheels. i asked them to make me a custom offset in the 17x8 and they said sorry we can't. Why they came up with the stupid +40 offset is beyond me. that is subaru offset specs.

the wedsport TC005 came in +32 offset 17x8. I could make a 17x8+30offset wheel work no problem in their wheel spec with a 235/40R17 and it wouldnt contact the fender on a summer performance street tire.

THen people wonder why enthusiasts flock to chinese manufacture that are actually willing to do custom wheels.

And I was really liking the apex wheels because they make the center bore exactly to oem spec

This post has been edited by BonzaiCelica: May 28, 2026 - 12:04 PM

[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.