So What Do We Call This Now?

[macdeb]

^^^^ Can't argue with that.
bugger, top of page

[Jon39]

telum01 said:

Is that a British thing? In the US, MY is based on the date of manufacture, not when it was registered. So all MY08 would be 4.3L, even if they sat unsold for an extra year (which was indeed the case!).

I should not be adding to Mike's reply, because he knows far more about AMs than me.

I think Gaydon pauses for a holiday every August, as do many other motor related businesses in the West Midlands (UK).
The next Model Year Aston Martins often begin when production begins again following that holiday break. Therefore usually September built cars.

The point mentioned about the 4.3L cars first registered in 2009. Dealers were stuck with cancelled orders and unsold stock in 2008, due to the financial recession. Some of the new 4.3L cars, may have been almost one year old, before being sold. Particularly unfortunate timing, because the 4.7L began delivery in September 2008 (a few before that date), which probably made the new 4.3L cars even more difficult to sell, at that time.

[telum01]

MY for cars sold in the US don't align with the calendar year, either - can't think of anywhere that it happens that way. Kinda like how fiscal year (FY) is its own thing. MY and FY both pertain to their own annual beginning and end points, which is why they're used to define something specific in a given industry. In the US, the only thing that matters is when the car was built, it's actual MY build. I've noticed on PH, FB, and a few other places that owners in the UK and some other places sometimes say MY and plate registration year, which confused me a bit, but I think ties in directly to this topic. None of the rest is even a thing in the US, only MY based on build date.

Not sure if the Aug-Sep change in MY is a global norm or what, honestly never thought about it.

What gets really confusing for referencing a specific car like this is the mid-year updating, like the MY10.5 addition of primary cats in V8 exhaust manifolds, and the MY12.25 updates to front brakes and steering racks in the V8V...

I remember when there were a lot of leftover '08 cars on the lot - perfect storm of recession making all sales slump, and the 4.7L engine making the '09 so desirable over the '08. Got offered a massive discount on an '08 that I would have loved, except it was a Sportshift which make it a no-go for me. The car sat unsold for a VERY long time.

[Jon39]

telum01 said:

I've noticed on PH, FB, and a few other places that owners in the UK and some other places sometimes say MY and plate registration year, which confused me a bit, but I think ties in directly to this topic.

If you are interested Rich, I can explain that.

Imagine a Model Year 2009 Vantage.
It was probably built between August 2008 and August 2009.
If someone had been selling one of those cars in say January 2010, it could have been 5 months old, or nearly a year and a half old.
By quoting the plate registration, that narrows down the age to 6 months.

The UK registration plate system is a minefield.
From 1963 onwards, to please the motor industry, plates have included first registration date identifiers. Initially by calendar year.
That changed slightly in I think 1967, away from calendar year to August to August. Awkward timing (which was later altered)because the artificial car buying boom was occurring at industry holiday time, but buyers still wanted to show off their new cars on August 1st. Some customers changed their car every August. It certainly helped sales.
Eventually the system changed again, to have year designation twice each year, so now the car buying booms are in March and September.
The pre-1963 registration marks have become valuable, and are a popular way of avoiding having the latest date mania.
New cars registered since March now show 18 on the registration mark. The owners have only a short time to feel special, because in September their next door neighbour might have a 68 registration car on their driveway. Top trumps eh.

[telum01]

Ahh, very interesting. Thanks for the explanation

[macdeb]

Grants book is a good place to look, subtle differences from year to year.

[telum01]

macdeb said:

Grants book is a good place to look, subtle differences from year to year.

I don't think the actual differences are the issue. It's what to call a car based on its generation, or with chassis-based shorthand.

996, 997, 991 Porsche. R32, R33, R34 Skyline. That sort of thing. Those cars are fairly uniform in each generation, though they do have variants. Aston Martins aren't. If someone says, "I have a 996TT X50" then Porsche guys will know quite a bit about the car just based on that.

So the challenge being discussed is, how to easily identify an Aston and know about various aspects of it without listing off the full build specs. I'm not sure it's really feasible for us, unfortunately. I think we're going to be stuck with year/model/description to identify cars because changes to the cars were so gradual and the generations last so long. The 997 lasted from 2004 to 2012, split across the midlife update (997.1 vs 997.2). The previous-gen Vantage lasted from 2005 to 2018. That's an incredibly long lifecycle for a modern car, even with its midlife facelift in 2012.

[williamp]

MrB. said:

Officially (if my memory serves me correctly) the internal codename for the Gaydon-era Vantage was AM308 (I think DB9 was AM305, but I will stand corrected). The Supercharged Vantage from the 1990's has usually been referred to as one of the V-cars (for Virage) and the 1980's cars OI (Oscar India, phonetic for "October Introduction", the timing for the car's launch in 1978. Although they did go through five series of these culminating in the very last X-Packs).

The new Vantage is the 4th car to use the name Vantage as the model name in its own right, rather than the flagship of that particular range, and is derived from the word "ad-vantage".

As always, happy to be corrected if my memory has faded due to the onset of too much vino collapso from the past 20 years.

Well, the V8 vantage was launched in feb 77, 20 monts before the OI improvements. And the amoc recognises three distinct series, not 5. Its a very confusing minefield. Not helped by the AM Vantage, the first model to be called a Vantage in its own right. This was slower then its brother, which had the V8 engine. Then theres "project Vantage", which became the Vanquish. Its faster version was....the S, not Vantage

[MrB.]

williamp said:

MrB. said:

Officially (if my memory serves me correctly) the internal codename for the Gaydon-era Vantage was AM308 (I think DB9 was AM305, but I will stand corrected). The Supercharged Vantage from the 1990's has usually been referred to as one of the V-cars (for Virage) and the 1980's cars OI (Oscar India, phonetic for "October Introduction", the timing for the car's launch in 1978. Although they did go through five series of these culminating in the very last X-Packs).

The new Vantage is the 4th car to use the name Vantage as the model name in its own right, rather than the flagship of that particular range, and is derived from the word "ad-vantage".

As always, happy to be corrected if my memory has faded due to the onset of too much vino collapso from the past 20 years.

Well, the V8 vantage was launched in feb 77, 20 monts before the OI improvements. And the amoc recognises three distinct series, not 5. Its a very confusing minefield. Not helped by the AM Vantage, the first model to be called a Vantage in its own right. This was slower then its brother, which had the V8 engine. Then theres "project Vantage", which became the Vanquish. Its faster version was....the S, not Vantage

Apologies for my tardy response insomuch as to the introduction of the V8 Vantage. You are, of course, correct, although there were 5 series of OI’s “technically”, with the very last of the EFi’s being the Series 5 (only 65 produced).

However, to correct BamfordMike, the MY designation within AML, was never to differentiate between when a car was registered, but to when it was built to a specification. An ‘08’ MY Vantage meant it had the raised armrest and iPod integration, but an ‘09’ would always mean a 4.7, irrespective of registration date of the individual car. In 2008, at the end of 4.3 production, we sold our last 20 cars from stock as the V400 specification, which were 4.3 litre cars but with the 400bhp engine upgrade plus extras, but they were never 09MY irrespective of registration date.