Autos:
Motoring Matters.
Driving With
Dinosaurs?
By Mark D’Apice
This morning I woke up with an How do I know this? It's well known that deep in The Aston tickled that very part of the brain
illness. I had the usual symptoms of
the recesses of our mind is all the knowledge that that releases the chemicals that makes you feel
a mild cold, runny nose, sore throat,
has been passed down from our caveman ancestors. ‘excited’. No other word for it. I could have just
headache, that kind of thing.
This means that when we hear the full-throttle noise found out that my fiancée had run off with
Obviously being a man this meant I
which comes from an Aston Martin, our brain another man or that I had just bought a load of
had to stay in bed all day with just
releases the same chemical it did when it thought shares in a promising little high-street chain
our body was about to become the entrée for a 25- called ‘Woolworths’, nothing would have
the occasional trip to the kitchen
foot lizard. spoiled those precious hours I spent in the
for sustenance.
DB9, all because of the soundtrack.
Some smart Alec, will be jumping up and down at
Now, seeing as I was obviously at death's door,
this point, bursting to tell someone I’m wrong Of course, speed may release a bit of adrenalin
and the fact I had caught up with everything on
because dinosaurs predate man by quite a few but that’s nothing compared to the primeval
Sky+, I watched a programme where some
million years. For the sake of this column, I’m déjà vu experienced when you hear those
archaeologists dug up a dinosaur. The programme
saying that’s wrong. twelve cylinders roaring a mere few feet away.
speculated on what they ate, where they lived and
OK there are faster and better cars available
used some CGI graphics to illustrate what the
Anyway, to my point. As you may have guessed, than the Aston, but just for the sound alone -
scene may have looked like. This got me thinking,
before I was struck down with my illness, I had been it’s my all-time favourite car.
what did they actually sound like?
looning about in an Aston Martin DB9 equipped
with a 6.0-litre V12 engine and what impressed the
It then hit me, the answer was easy. The vicious
most was the sound. Never before had I driven a car
ones, the T-Rex for example, made a noise just
that sounded so powerful that I spent most of my
like a V12 Aston Martin.
allotted time driving it in second gear at 6,000rpm.
39
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