For most of my childhood, I wanted to be a car designer, and the brand I sketched the most was Aston Martin. It was not the Bond association though. With Aston, you could look to almost any time in their heritage and find the same signatures but interpreted in fresh new ways. They all had that long, flowing hood, a curved, bubble-like glass-house, and a tight, muscular rear; and whether you were thinking about the classic DB5, Callum’s DB9, or my personal favorite, the 1990s Vantage, they all were masculine, elegant, and powerful.

That is, until the 2010s, where Aston hit a bit of a rough spot. Ian Callum had so perfectly nailed the turn-of-the-century Aston Martin look with the DB7 and DB9, that everything else just had to riff off that look. The Vanquish, DBS, 2005 Vantage, One-77, and four-door Rapide were all just variants on that design language, and though they all were beautiful, the look was getting a bit tired, and each face-lift, attempting to modernize them, simultaneously made the look less pure whilst also making it obvious how old-hat it was.

When they finally tried making new designs, they were all either underwhelming or downright ugly. 2013’s CC100 concept was just an uglier, windscreen-free version of the Vantage, as was its later production version, the 2012 V12 Speedster. The Lagonda All-Terrain concept was a heinous blob of an SUV, and though Aston Martin’s production SUV, the DBX, is a lot more pleasant, it just looks like every mid-range crossover, but with Aston Martin lights and grills slapped on it.

They needed a new DB line to center the design language on, to finally move past the lineage of the DB9, but this was also a pretty underwhelming, stumbling exercise. The DB10 concept, featured in the Bond film “Spectre,” was an attempt at a new minimalist direction, but their attempt to simplify surfacing and details just made for an unpleasant, boring little car. For production, they therefore pivoted, and wound up with the unresolved, uninteresting 2016 DB11. There were some lovely details – the rear lights are fantastic, and the flying rear buttress is elegant – but the car has this blobby, unrefined look, and these random thrown on details just exaggerate that. And the Volante convertible version was just horrific.

Over time, they did improve on this template though. The V12 DB11 got some refinements to the styling, which really improved the stance and feel of the car, and the 2018 DBS Superleggera took this even further, bringing back the old-school 90s muscle. There were still some awkward elements – the new rear lights had no connection to the design language of the rest of the car – but it was the first modern Aston that had its own look, and was genuinely beautiful. Again though, this was just a polished up version of the DB11 design, not a new design language, and they needed a new look to bring them into the 2020s.

And they found it, twice, but squandered both opportunities.

The first ‘new look’ for Aston came at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show, where Aston Martin did not just unveil one car but CEO Andy Palmer announced the car company would be completely changing its direction, making a new line-up of all mid-engine cars. Inspired by their super limited edition Valkyrie ‘race-car for the road’ – a disastrous project I have written about before – Aston Martin would make a high-end supercar, named the Valhalla, and a new mid-engined Vanquish. These were bold, beautiful, and looked nothing like the Callum designs of the early 2000s; a perfect new direction for Aston. However, they canned this, releasing yet another polished up version of the old front-engined Vantage, and are limiting the mid-engine designs for their multi-million-dollar limited edition models. The Valhalla apparently will still be released though development has been repeatedly delayed, and the car has been completely redesigned. It is still a striking machine, but a lot less so than the first concept.

But then, in 2021, Aston Martin unveiled the Victor; a one-off special, made for a discerning client, and it was spectacular. Inspired by the 90s Vantage and limited 2015 track-only Vulcan, it was low and mean, with round headlights and side exhausts, and exactly what Aston Martin needed to revitalize its design language. They had finally done it; found a new, original look for modern, front-engine Aston Martins, which they could tone down for a production model, which they did in the Valour. Except, that is also just a $1M+, limited run model, based on the Vantage, ripping off their richest customer.

The actual DB12 is just a bigger DB11, with headlights inspired by the DB9, and a big grill from the DBS. The new Vanquish, as I wrote about here, is much of the same too. They will be fine, but completely forgettable, and that is not enough for the Aston Martin name.