'It may be an anachronism, but it is a glorious one': Aston Martin V8 Vantage Volante

How does one assess a car that costs more than most people pay for their house? After slightly more than 24 hours and 350 miles in an Aston Martin V8 Volante, I am not sure. List price of the Volante is a formidable £68,500, but the cost of the car I drove, equipped with the most powerful Vantage version of the Aston V8, would be well over £70,000.

Prices of the Aston Martin range start at £55,000 for the V8 Saloon, now equipped with a fuel-injected version of the 5.3-litre V8 engine, developing 305bhp. Next comes the V8 Vantage, claimed by Aston Martin to be the world's fastest production car, at £59,500. This is a faster version of the Saloon, with power bulge on the bonnet to make room for the four twin-choke Weber carburettors, plus flared wheel arches to accommodate the huge Pirelli P7 275/55 VR15 tyres. Options on these two cars are few, but cruise control (on the automatic only) — the Saloon is offered with a choice of three-speed automatic or five-speed manual; the Vantage is manual only — will set you back a further £429, and electric sliding sunroof a massive £1,993.

If your enthusiasm for open-air motoring extends beyond wanting a sliding sunroof, then the Volante convertible is for you. Most expensive of the Aston Martin range is the Lagonda V8 Automatic Saloon (£79,500).

With prices like this, Aston Martin does not expect to sell many cars. Current production at the Newport Pagnell works is about 200 vehicles a year, of which around 90 are sold in America, perhaps 45 in Britain, and the remainder in Europe and the Middle East.

Natural competitors to the Aston Martin range are few in number. Prices of Porsche's V8-engined 928 start at a modest £38,519, but the mass-produced Porsche does not have any of the Aston's traditional handmade appeal, even if its ability as a grand touring car far exceeds that of the Aston. There is, of course, the Ferrari Testarossa (£62,666), powered by a superb flat-12 engine, and almost certainly faster than the Aston Vantage, regardless of the British company's claims, but the Testarossa has an eye-catching vulgarity that the Aston Martin totally lacks.

No, it is probably best to think of Aston Martin as a sporting alternative to Rolls-Royce. Both marques have similar pedigrees, and are built to the same exacting, old-fashioned standards, with a surfeit of hide and lacquered walnut trim. And compared with the £92,995 the company from Crewe charges for the Corniche convertible, the Aston Martin looks to be something of a bargain.

I climbed straight into the Aston after several hundred miles in Ford's inspiring Granada Scorpio 4x4, which fairly bristles with modern technology. It was like stepping back 20 years, for the Aston has changed very little since it was launched in the late 1960s. One had to admire the elegance of the English burr-walnut dashboard, the superb leather trim (even the top of the dashboard is finished in stitched hide), the old-fashioned but still pleasing instrumentation. Ergonomic logicality is sadly lacking, especially when compared with the Ford. The switches for the electric windows are in the middle of the dashboard, not in the doors; the intermittent windscreen wipe is a knob next to the radio, not incorporated in the main control for the wipers (a stalk to the right of the wheel), and even the indicators are a very long finger-stretch from the leather-bound wheel.

Starting the latest fuel-injected cars is simple, but there is a technique to master with the carburettored cars. First you select which of the four keys you need for the ignition — why four keys when most manufacturers make do with one? — then you must prime the carbs with a few deep prods of the accelerator pedal. Then turn the key and, hopefully, that mighty V8 will roar into life with a note that echoes Le Mans, and sends a tingle down the spine. There is a manual choke, but no reason to use it. Release the fly-off handbrake and you are ready to go.

The manual cars, such as the Volante I drove, are fitted with a ZF gearbox, noted for its massive strength more than the purity of its gearchange. First is a dog-leg down to the left, and opposite reverse, with the remaining four gears in the usual H-pattern. Spring loading moves the lever towards second and third gears, making this a much easier box to use than first impressions suggest. However, operating the clutch takes a strong left leg, and an equally powerful right leg is needed for the brake, for hauling this hefty car, weighing not far short of two tons, to a halt takes some effort even with servo-assisted ventilated discs front and rear.

In keeping with the rest of the controls, the steering is also relatively heavy, despite power assistance, but it retains plenty of feel and has only 2.9 turns from lock to lock. The turning circle is a cumbersome 38ft. Those huge tyres give tremendous grip in the dry, but in the wet more caution is needed: I had the back end break away while climbing a slippery but very steep hill, requiring a quick dab of corrective lock. With much of my mileage on wet roads, I was not brave enough to test Aston's claims for the car's roadholding, but I will quote the brochure: 'Through corners the handling is superb. And at a level of centrifugal forces that only a few near-racing designs can match.' But such a large and heavy car cannot hope to match the agility of, say, a Porsche 911 or Lotus Esprit, however skilled the driver.

Performance is formidable, that great V8 thrusting the car forward with amazing force when you consider not only the car's weight, but also its blunt design. Aston Martin very wisely does not give a Cd figure [drag coefficient] for the car. The company quotes a 0–60 mph time of 5.2 seconds for the hard-top Vantage, and the car I drove was probably not much slower. But I did not feel that quick; large cars never do. Top speed is well over 160 mph, while a mere 90 mph feels more like a gentle canter. The penalty for all this performance comes in the fuel consumption, which can drop as low as 10 mpg if driven with a heavy right foot, but will improve to around 15 or 16 mpg when touring.

Despite the vagaries of the English climate in early April, I tried some open-top motoring. First release the two catches which fasten the hood to the top of the windscreen, then press the power switch, and suddenly you have a convertible car. That at least is the theory, but for some reason the power-hood operation did not work on my car. I pushed it back by hand instead, which took some strength but no skill, the hood folding perfectly into its deep well.

The car's personality was transformed in an instant, and it attracted admiring glances that it never received with the hood up (or was it simply the pedestrians' reaction to seeing an open-top car on a chilly early April day?). Anyway, the Volante is at its best when open to the world, and even when driving down the Old Kent Road or up the M11, I could pretend that I was in the South of France, or California perhaps. A reminder that the car is probably better suited to those climes was the lack of heating my feet. Air conditioning is standard, but for a convertible car in Britain a powerful heater is rather more useful, while for hood-up motoring fresh-air ventilation and hot feet would be nice to have.

Looked at dispassionately, the Aston is an ageing heavyweight, well past its best. Such modern innovations as anti-lock brakes, even headlamp washers, are not available, and despite the current glut of oil on the world market I still feel that a car with a thirst as great as this is anti-social. On the other hand the Aston Martin is one of the last of an almost extinct breed: the traditional British sports car. The quality of its construction is simply superb, the paintwork a pleasure to look at. It may be an anachronism, but it is a glorious one.