Celebrate The New V12 Aston By Rewatching One Of The Greatest Top Gear Films

Next week, Aston Martin will debut a new, V12-powered flagship GT car, and it’s safe to say we’re quite excited. See, it wasn’t very long ago at all that we thought the V12 engine as a concept was on borrowed time – and we weren’t the only ones.

Back in 2009, Aston first had the excellent idea of putting its biggest engine in its smallest car – back then, a 5.9-litre, naturally aspirated 510bhp V12, and the original, dizzyingly pretty Vantage, respectively.

It was only natural that Top Gear would get their hands on it, but the film that resulted wasn’t the usual case of skidding it around Dunsfold, then handing it to The Stig to see what it could really do. Instead, Jeremy Clarkson took it out into the world, and the TG team made one of the most heart-wrenchingly bittersweet pieces of automotive film ever.

A short piece set against some of the most stunning scenery anywhere in Britain, it was a film of remarkably few words by Clarkson’s standards. What he does say still sticks with everyone who watched it on that summer Sunday evening in 2009, and any time since.

It was essentially an ode to what, at the time, Clarkson believed would be one of the very last V12-powered cars – perhaps one of the very last supercars full stop – ever made, and to everything that came before. Combined with stabs of the Aston’s raucous V12 and the utterly haunting soundtrack, Brian Eno’s appropriately titled ‘An Ending (Ascent)’, it still gives us goosebumps to this day.

What’s more, after Clarkson’s closing ‘goodnight’, there’s no cut to the usual end credits – they simply roll over more beauty shots as Eno’s atmospheric soundtrack continues. It led to all sorts of speculation at the time that that was the end of Top Gear.

Thankfully, it wasn’t, and nor was it for supercars, or the V12. In fact, there are probably more supercars around now than ever and while, yes, the V12 is steadily disappearing, a few select manufacturers are keeping the faith. Manufacturers like Aston – we can’t wait to see what it’s cooked up next. In the meantime, rewatch the piece and remind yourself what we thought we were going to be missing.