A daft question to kill my last hr of work...

Stupidly..I looked at PH classifieds at the values of '06/'07 V8Vs and realised that the V8V I bought about 3/4 months ago seems to have dropped hard.

For argument sake, lets say we're talking £40K. Total ball park.
I then looked what I could afford in way of upgrading and the answer is...not a lot.
Seems to be a big space between my car and the likes of N400s (£50k+), Vantage S (£70k+) and DBS (£85k+)

I love my car (apart from clunky 1st and 2nd...TADTS)...but it needs more oompf!
380bhp aint a lot in todays standards!
Also looked in carbon bits to tart is up...mainly interior. Prob waste of dosh.

So where does a poor man like me with entry level go?
Stick with it and hope for lotto numbers!

Anyway, that killed 10mins...

For around £5K you can get near 4.7 performance and a better sound. For around a total of £9.5K you can make it into pretty much 4.7 spec with a better clutch and gearchange, better sound and more useable performance.

I shall just use the letters 'BR'

DB9 manual with sports pack is very, very near the the DBS in term of performance, especially with 200cell catalysts, decent filters and a backbox! Add some H&R springs, of which I have a set going begging...

No need to £85k for a DBS, certain DB9s do it just as well

you need to find perspective perhaps ...I often have the same upgrade thoughts

my 2006 car is worth about £25K if im lucky...and a 4.7 Roadster is +£35K more

is it £35K more fun? ...not really

sure its nice to upgrade, and spend £10K on what youve got is cheaper, will keep you interested for a while longer, but you never get the money back on mods

Id just save up some more...the newer cars are depreciating faster than yours, so the gap to upgrade IS closing ....another years bonus and I will hopefully be in my 4.7

Roadster? You've been going on about one for ages!

Spot on! Wood has no place in a Gaydon era car.
Although you'd never get the money back on any interior upgrades, it would make your car unique and personal. Add in the Bamfird Rose upgrades and you will have a very special car!!

Buying a 4.7 would give more power and a slightly different interior but it would not be unique nor quite as personal.

Or spend the 10K, get an enormous amount of fun out of the car for another couple of years (by which time the depreciation on it will probably have reached a plateau), save for your 4.7 and then when you reach the goal decide if it is worth spending your saved money or if the 4.7 really doesn't give you that much extra over what you have. Then spend what you saved on the GT4 engine and brake upgrade and have you very own Jessica

You do make me laugh with your comments, although this one didn't make me chuckle as much as your 480bhp not being enough for your style of driving comment the other day

I'm definitely in a minority, but I didn't really see much driving improvement in the normal 4.7 (certainly over an N400) - and I prefer the 4.3 interior (yes, that makes me weird). The flappy paddles are definitely better in the 4.7, if you like that kind of thing.

As others have pointed out, making a 4.3 go faster is quite cheap, but you won't get the money back.

If/when my clutch goes, I'll probably get the BR one, but I'm not itching to upgrade anything really.

- Steve

It's personal choice George.
But Aston don't offer wood inside a Vantage. And I can't recall any pictures of anybody adding a wooden ski slope to a Vantage.

If the OP chooses to add Carbon Fibre (and in my opinion, that is very modern and classy) thats his choice. But as I've already said, that money would not be added to the value of the car but would personalise it. The same could probably be said for performance upgrades too. It's doubtful whether they would add value to the car. They may even make it harder to sell.