History of the Aston Martin DB7

The Aston Martin DB7 was produced from September 1994 to December 2004, financed by Ford (which owned Aston Martin at the time). It was developed in partnership with Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR) and assembled at the TWR Bloxham plant in Oxfordshire. Many racing sports cars such as the Jaguar XJ220 were built at the Bloxham plant. Tom Walkinshaw passed away in 2010 and today Astons are prepared by Prodrive for national and international race series including An British GT and Le Mans.

The DB7 continued Aston Martin’s heritage for building beautiful cars. It shares many of the features of its famous grand touring car predecessors from the DB4, launched in 1958, to the DB6 which finished production in 1971. This is especially true of the distinctive grille and muscular rear wings.

When unveiled at the Geneva Motorshow in 1993 the car received a rapturous press reaction for its styling, the work of British car designer Ian Callum. Described as a ‘gentleman’s club on wheels’, the car was a class act which secured Aston’s future after years of uncertainty. By the early 1990s only a handful of cars had been trickling out of the factory gates. The DB7 changed all that, with over 2,400 six-cylinder cars sold – a company record.

Our Aston Martin hire car is one of a long line of models produced from 1914 onwards. To see more about Aston Martin models of the past visit their Heritage site.

The Aston Martin DB7 straight six supercharged DB7 i6 first came off the production line in 1994 and was produced until 1999. Its predecessor was the Aston Martin V8 Vantage. The underpinnings of the DB7 are shared with the Jaguar XK8, but the DB7 was a much more expensive car.

The original six-cylinder DB7 is rarer than the Vantage V12, with just 2,461 cars built including 885 drop tops.

• 6 cylinder supercharged all alloy engine, 3239cc, double overhead camshaft
• Zytec electronic multi-point fuel injection
• Power – 335bhp at 5500rpm
• Torque – 368lb ft at 3000rpm
• 5 speed manual Getrag gearbox
• Rear wheel drive
• Steering – rack and pinion, power assisted
• Front suspension – independent double wishbone, coil springs, mono-tube dampers with anti-roll bar
• Rear suspension – independent double wishbone, longitudinal control arms, coil springs, and mono-tube shock absorbers for additional performance
• Brakes – front and rear ventilated discs
• Interior – full Connolly leather with burr walnut veneer
• Aston Martin 10 spoke aluminium alloy wheels, 8 x 18inch
• Length – 4650mm
• Width – 1830mm
• Height – 1240mm
• Weight – 1725kg
• Price at launch in 1994 – £78,500
• Successors – Aston Martin DB7 Vantage, and later the Aston Martin DB9