So we have the combination of jeremy clarkson, talking about it on a show that was the biggest show in the world and everybody else wanting to be jeremy clarkson, an island full of clarkson's. If you will - and this car well went into the anals of history as one of the worst flappy paddles of all time, is it deserved? I don't think so. One mississippi onomatopoeia hippopotamuses, i i guess i can say pretty high silver words in between shifting, but it is really really not that bad welcome to who's garage, the dumbest automotive channel in all of youtube and my latest purchase or early trade should look familiar to you Because it is indeed the car trek vanquish, it is a 2003 aston martin vacation that we used in car trek 2. ed bowling of vinwicki, bought it for less than 30 thousand dollars.

It's been a lot of time in colombia, the country, but no drugs were found, and then he sold it to freddie before i could stick my claim to it. Freddie bought it for around 37 000 and at the time i was quite angry because it was the first time ed. Bullion had really given away a car. He was kind of delirious in the record heat that summer in las vegas, like 120 degrees literally, and he was sweating it out in this thing, with bad air conditioning badly misfiring and he sold it for maybe a slight loss to freddie, and i was so jealous, Especially after he sold me a very broken murcielago and he made thirty thousand dollars off of me on that sale or maybe more i've heard different numbers over the years.

But in the two years since on this car trek, i have been a very, very patient man waiting patiently for my turn to reclaim this car that i have always wanted, and it finally happened with a very, very broken audi. R8. If you all don't recall, i bought this audi r8 for my wife for christmas, and i was told by the seller. It ran and drove and it showed up uh not running and driving.

It indeed needed an engine because it was way out of time - and i was quoted well over 20 000, close to 30 000 to fix it on a vehicle that i was forty five thousand dollars invested to with accident history. With the you know, kind of sketchy, odometer reporting in decent but sketchy condition, which realistically would have me almost eighty thousand dollars into a v8 hour. Eight with that kind of history. It made no sense, but when i had that car it was kind of like bait for tovarsh, i knew he wanted it.

He emailed me almost immediately talking about how much he wanted it and rather than sell it to him, i said. Well, i do covet your vanquish concern and this car - thankfully he hadn't done anything with because of the reason why these are so cheap and well here it is i traded in my r8. I gave him 10 000 on top of that, and i gave him back the pimp my ride van as sort of a tip, so he wouldn't complain and now it's mine. So not only is it mine, but it's actually mine at a pretty decent price.

Considering today's market so let's say 55 000 into this v12 vanquish and really that's about the going rate, but it's better than losing ten or twenty thousand dollars selling off that audi r8 uh with all those problems. So thank you again for that freddie. But really that's all probably this car is worth giving it story, and history 27 or 8 000 miles on it, so not too bad on the miles, and that really is a crime. Honestly.

Originally this car was close to a quarter of a million dollars. They only built 2500 of these and it celebrated really the return of aston martin to its greatness, building, exceptional hand-built, amazing cars and the greatness, and the specialness of this car has been sort of overshadowed by subsequent aston martin models. That look well a lot like this, but they aren't nearly as special, not to mention being a bond car which you all know i have the z8. I now have two brosnan bond cars, the best ones, the other reason why these are so cheap.

Well, it's the transmission. That's inside of it that's been mocked for decades, thanks to one man, really the biggest automotive influencer in the world and my personal idol. But in this case i'm gon na have to knock him a little bit. But before we get into the one review and foible of this car that ruined its reputation and sent resale values plummeting a little bit of history in the late 80s aston martin was on live support.

They were only building a few hundred cars if that per year and they were having trouble selling those so ford bought them out, along with jaguar and ian callum, pinned a design to continue the jaguar brand and well ford thought well. That would look a lot better on an aston martin, so it ended up being the db7, although they didn't update the underneath. Now i'm a fan of the db7, but it is basically a horse and buggy underneath they continue the old, xjs kind of chassis, suspension, setup and put a beautiful, modern body on it. But it was a pretty lazy touring car under the hood was an inline six that was supercharged from a jur, but a few years later they brought up this v12.

That is under the hood and then a few years after aston martin finally got a car worthy of its name, not sort of a rebadged rehash of an existing jaguar, and that was this. The v12 vanquish in person. It is so much cooler looking than the db7 or a db9 or pretty much any aston martin that replaced it. The hips on this thing are so wide the front end treatment just so so cool and even though it looks like every other aston martin sort of in general principle for the next 15 years.

I think this is the best looking one of the bunch and it is pretty much the original. I mean look at this rear quarter, section right here now: austin martin made about 2500 of these and priced them around 230 000 to be competitive with the ferrari 575 and well. They immediately depreciated. It's not hard to find one of these for 50 or 60 thousand dollars nowadays, even in today's crazy, crazy market, whereas a 575 is a 100 000 car or more another comparable, let's say the mercy logo, the early ones, the coupes they had a 280 000 msrp.

Maybe it was in the high 260s and now they're well worth about half that i suppose, but not as bad as the aston martin. Where is worth a quarter of that or less, and that's why ed picked this for the car trek 2 challenge of buying the most appreciated exotic that we could find now i sort of won that in every kind of way the most appreciated car with the cl65 Amg v12 twin turbo and a lot of the challenges i ended up winning the track, but really everybody wanted the v12 vanquish, literally everybody, because all three of us have owned it. At this point - and yes, i bought it for less than 30 thousand dollars, probably the cheapest one to transact ever, but it showed up with a bad clutch which was monstrously expensive, more expensive than lamborghini clutches. I think they're over three thousand dollars.

Just for that part and numerous other issues that weren't really corrected by the time car trek rolled around and he struggled through the entire thing now freddie bought it - the wizard actually inspected it during the trek. So i have that peace of mind for the first time. We're actually going to go back up there today because it's been two years since then, but freddie has fixed a lot of things, including the brakes, i'm sure it wasn't cheap now i know one of them did a tune up on it change the spark plugs. It is running a lot better than it was in the desert, and other little hears in there is the wheels are after market.

The original ones were bent, probably being in columbia with the terrible roads, but these i really don't mind them. I think they look fantastic. The whole car needs a clean, but otherwise it is in very, very nice shape and coming from a db7 and a db9 recently, a repeat this thing just feels more special for a lot of reasons inside and out - oh there's still my junk in here, but you Can kind of see the detail in the interior with the door panel? This is real metal, real metal surrounding the speakers. You can see it's a fantastic stereo system.

The seats i'll certainly look their age, they look like the mid-2000s, but in the back you can see. No back seat but that rear parcel shelf with that factory stereo, look at that giant, subwoofer there that is adjustable. This interior is just so dang cool, let down a little bit by these plasticky buttons. The start button is nice, though, and this jaguar climate control system, the quality, does go back up, though, with this being metal - and this i imagine, is supposed to open, but it doesn't.

The stereo certainly looks nice and then these grab handles they are metal. You see, there's no gear selector. It is a automated manual transmission, where hey flappy, paddle gear boxes, the man himself, jeremy clarkson coined the phrase a suede headliner. But let me tell you this car.

It just feels so much more special than any other aston martin that i've owned it honors the heritage of the brand, much more than say, the aston martins that have replaced it and since they're now amg powered vehicles now they're really really cool. But it's not the same as this and really well. That's the reason why aston martin went bankrupt or close to it, so many times is because they would build cars like these, where there was no bean counter telling them to not do that. But really we should thank the cars that were built by bean counters, because the db7 obviously saved aston martin as a brand proved it to be well, it could be viable again and they were able to build this.

And, of course we saw the return of aston. Martin to bond movies that was so important with this one in die another day, rescuing halle berry from the ice hotel in that ice race with the jaguar xkr chasing it was it a particularly great bond movie? No, but i was entertained by saying that the world is not enough and the z8 is not the greatest bond movie, but very entertaining very fun and unlike the z8, they got sawed in half the vanquish had a lot more screen time and well really did save The day cloaking device that kind of stuff, so for so many reasons in my eyes, this is such an undervalued under appreciated car. If you take the z8, for example, that's now a 200 000 plus vehicle with low mileage. Where is this? I was waiting for the transmission to shut up, whereas this is just criminally cheap, basically like a mid-level ford, f-150, cheap and well.

We all know why yep these things, but in my opinion it is one of the biggest automotive fish stories ever up there with like porsche ims, bearings or mercedes amg, 6.3, head bolts, it's gotten so crazy over the years, so blown out of proportion with so few People actually experiencing the car firsthand to make their own opinions that well it's just ridiculous and that's why these are so cheap. But today we are setting the record straight starting the v12 vanquish you put in the jaguar key that is barely disguised put it in neutral. Both flappies and then engine start feels special. Doesn't it next i'm going to hit the sport button, which is what you should do immediately, because it makes all of it so much better than first gear and we're off and guess what the world is not coming to an end.

The clutch engaged smoothly. It's fine, but let's get to the part where jeremy clarkson absolutely hated this thing, all right, let's accelerate and shift now does that seem slow to you. Does that seem terrible, especially keeping in mind. This is 20 years old, this technology.

At this point - and i wasn't lifting off the gas at all, i was just flapping the paddle like i would in my lamborghini or any other car one mississippi, onomatopoeia hippopotamuses. I i guess i can say pretty high silver words in between shifting, but it is really really not that bad all it took for this car to have this reputation is a review by one man, jeremy clarkson, who drove this thing in top gear, complaining about all The flappy paddle gear boxes that were coming out drove this thing to a boat ramp and floor reversed it up the boat ramp, trying to turn around just to show how terrible it was. But really i broke traction there, a little bit. That was the traction control, but really try doing that in a manual transmission on a steep hill, a boat ramp like that and you'll struggle just as hard.

Yes, it can feel clumsy at times and yes, it doesn't always do what you want it to do, but the same goes for any manual transmission driver. You always make a mistake, but if you had a normal slushbox car, you wouldn't be having this much fun and i think the other issue was people buying these expecting them to drive like an automatic or hitting that horrible automatic. Why did that volkswagen not get over? That's ridiculous anyway, hitting that automatic button and thinking it would act like an automatic transmission, but really just acts like a child learning how to drive a manual transmission, so the automatic mode is terrible, but the rest of it not that far off of a ferrari or A lamborghini of the era, so we have the combination of jeremy clarkson talking about it on a show that was the biggest show in the world and everybody else wanting to be jeremy clarkson, an island full of clarkson's. If you will - and this car well went into the anals of history as one of the worst flappy paddles of all time, is it deserved? I don't think so.

I really really don't think so and in today's world of lightning fast duel, clutch cars doesn't really matter. I mean honestly doesn't matter. Do i wish this car had a manual transmission? Well, absolutely, of course, and that's what jeremy clarkson was complaining about, give him the power to control the gears and do what he wants with the clutch and all that stuff, and i did agree with them in that respect and aston martin well apparently agreed with them. In retrospect, as well, because they do offer a service to convert these things to a manual transmission costs around 50 60 000, not including shipping, and you get a car back with completely transformed.

They do a whole new center console change. A lot of things to make it a proper manual, but man, oh man, is it expensive, now freddie's original intent to vars when he bought this car was to convert it over himself, but i don't think aston martin will sell him. The parts so he'd have to figure it out on his own and while that's far from impossible from him, it's quite a feat. This thing sat for a few years because of it, but i think when he got his manual dbs that really changed his tune because well there it was right there, a manual aston, martin v12, almost as pretty as this, in my opinion.

So basically, this car was waiting for me now i hadn't driven one of these in a very very long time. I didn't drive this one because it was so hot in vegas and it was dying in it and just melting, his goo and things into the seat. That i didn't want to sit in it now that i say that i doubt this car has been clean since then, but anyway i got this thinking. Well, maybe i will send it off to england to get it manual swap to get that all converted, and then i do get the money back.

The cars are worth at least what you put into them to make them a manual, but now that i have it, i don't want to do it. This really really isn't that bad is that a supra anyway, i do feel like there will be a time where people do figure. This out figure out how special these cars are. It's a carbon fiber chassis.

This thing sits on, even though it is very, very heavy low production, one of the most beautiful cars of all time - 460 horsepower v12. I feel like the secret. It can't stay a secret for that much longer. This thing is just too good, but maybe the car wizard will disagree with me when he looks at it again two years later.

I know he liked it back then, but will he like it today and i know he has worked in a few of these before so maybe his opinion on these mechanically will change our tune a little bit, but right now there's no way wizard. I brought back an old friend, i think i've seen this one before you've, you've seen it. Yes, it shut up. Sorry, it's a little talkative you've seen it you've been under it and you gave it a pretty decent bill of health once before two years ago.

Right and since then it's actually gotten better freddie, you had fixed the brakes, you'd mentioned the brakes are really you probably don't remember, because you do so many inspections, so many cars, it's been a while. I i watched the video again because i didn't remember there weren't any leaks. You just said the brakes were really thin and there was a code for an oxygen sensor which i think is fixed, but now the check engine light is flashing. It goes away sometimes, but then i can tell it's sputtering every once in a while, it's very intermittent and then sometimes another thing.

The coolant, low warning comes on and well the coolant's not low it. Just pops on sometimes scares me but seems fine, okay. Well, we could scan the codes real, quick to see what it says before we get it on a lift and look at it sure. But let's pop the hood first, okay, i didn't show it in my garage at home because i was saving it for you.

But look at this another way. This thing looks so special: the engine bay presentation on these see this crossbar with this old-school, carbon fiber mesh beautiful, and it has like little tubas that let heat out of the top yeah. So the there's a heat shield around the headers and they vent out into the hood, which makes it functional, but otherwise the same v12 that aston martin used for a long time. Two for taurus v6 is glued together to create actually a pretty good engine yeah.

They really it really are a good engine thanks to uh this guy. Here, oh yes, final inspection by thomas clark, he inspected. Well, it's held up decently, considering the life it's had, so it looks the same as two years ago. Anything new you're, seeing that's wrong.

No see at least, let's take a look around the front here. I think it was dry last time and it's dry again. I guess we could check for our codes and see what's going on, there sounds good. What does that interior smell like to you kind of smells like freddy's, rear, end well or heads? I mean he sweated so much in this car and lost 120 degree heat yeah, a combination of both of their sweaty asses, yeah, perfume to ed.

It needs a detail for sure so where's the obd2 slot on this thing. Well, most cars are under here somewhere under here, but actually this one you remove this panel. Velcro am i here. I was talking about the quality of the interior uh.

You know velcro's good quality, it works, the interior doesn't have any creaks or rattles, which is a testament to this thing. 20 years later. So it says there are five codes in this thing. Oh read the codes, please cylinder, one misfire cylinder, two cylinder three random misfire, cylinder four and the o2 sensor code is still there.

Oh indicates lean is what it says: yeah, so that might be just from the misfires okay, so you think uh a tune-up's in order for this thing, i think so, and you know that's not going to be cheap. No. I have actually had to do that. A few times now - and it requires removing all this beautifulness here - removing the intakes to get to the ignition coils and the spark plugs and the coils themselves are very expensive.

It's like 12 or 1400, because they're aston, martin, pacific and a lot of them. So three grand and then there's the coolant level thing which you know how much that is usually just the sensor. Well, if it's just the sensor or the reservoir could be 500 or more yeah. Okay, well, maybe freddie uh, we just kind of flung turds at each other from across the country, huh yeah you just kind of swapped them there.

We did. We just we flung the poo, so um. I was gloating a little too much in the garage. So maybe this is kind of karma biting me back, but i knew what i was getting into.

Hopefully there's nothing else, though, we'll get up on the lift and make sure huh. Let's do it not normally an aftermarket wheel, fan or black wheels, but i, like those yeah you like them, they look good with the color there all right. Well, there is some wetness going on, though, what it wasn't like, okay, is that oil. It seems like it.

Let's see if i can peek through some of these hidey holes here i don't see anything. There could be something simple as they did an oil change and got it all over the place or we'll have to pull down all these panels. That's what these cars are. All about on the bottom is panels on top of panels.

Yeah look at all these bolts. Well, even the transmission is protected yep. It's part of the structure. If you took this panel off and drove it around, it could be dangerous for the car.

Well, there's the spaghetti monster that controls the transmission. I imagine huh yep how about that. It's a little seepage right there, but nothing serious, not yet anyway, yeah well, that seems like a pretty minor oil leak. Yeah, it's minor whatever it is.

It's small, okay and going back it's it's. Just all bonded structure see there's orange here. That's actually adhesive like a hard plastic to glue together yeah. But then you have pretty easy jack points on this thing: yeah, but really not a lot to see.

They were thinking about aerodynamics as much underneath this thing as they were on top of it, whereas earlier aston, martin, sorry about your head, there yeah we're kind of just worried about what was on top like with the db7. We went and looked underneath and it looked like a ancient 1970s vehicle, whereas this this could look like something from 2022. Honestly, it could everything's dry on that wheel over there as well yeah whatever's going on with the leak. I think it's minor all right.

Well, i'm spending some money anyway, another tune-up on another aston martin. I need to quit selling these things and actually keep them, because i i fixed all this stuff and then sell them, and i have to do the tune-up again uh. The coolant thing definitely want to fix that it's annoying, and then i guess you'll. Let me know when you get all the panels off to do the oil change on what's going on underneath fingers crossed there, but i think i did well.

I i needed to get rid of that audi. R8. Obviously, i definitely would take this over the r8 any day i gave him 10 grand on top too you did. I did yeah.

I don't know about that. Well, thanks for the vote of confidence wizard, and thank you so much for watching this is worth a lot of money. Okay, maybe so.