Ebay Mobile Qa 0116 Do Not Buy on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Aston Martin recalling all DB11s over Daimler steering column

Aston Martin has become the latest carmaker to be caught up in a major recall of faulty Daimler steering-column components that can cause unintended airbag deployments. The British sports car maker is recalling all 3,873 DB11 coupes built since late 2015, when production of the flagship model began, Aston Martin spokesman Kevin Watters confirmed. He said repairs would be carried out to "address an issue with the DB11 steering column upper." Daimler last year recalled more than 1 million Mercedes-Benz cars fitted with steering-column parts also supplied to Aston and Nissan. The Japanese carmaker's Infiniti brand recalled 17,500 affected vehicles. The issue is unrelated to a global recall of faulty Takata airbag inflators that have been blamed for 20 deaths. Inadequate grounding in the Daimler units leaves their circuitry vulnerable to electrostatic charges that can trigger unintended airbag deployments, according to earlier warnings. Mercedes reported "a handful of instances where drivers suffered minor abrasions or bruises" as a result of the problem. No Aston Martin customers have reported any such incidents to date, the company said, adding the necessary repair work would be carried out free of charge in less than two hours. Reporting by Laurence FrostRelated Video:

Aston Martin DB5s from 'No Time to Die' sampled by Carfection

The excellent Henry Catchpole might have just made the most persuasive argument for restomods using one of the world's and pop culture's most celebrated classics. The Carfection host spent a day at Silverstone with no less than four takes on the Aston Martin DB5 — one of them the showstopping original in gleaming Silver Birch with the license plate BMT 216A, three of them stunt cars used in the next James Bond installment "No Time to Die." Catchpole starts off in the stock vintage two-door, its 4.0-liter straight-six sending about 282 horsepower and 287 pound-feet of torque to the live rear axle to move about 3,300 pounds. It's a thrill to run through apexes, but perhaps more for its pedigree than its prowess; at one point, Catchpole wonders, "How on earth he did some of those car chases with seats like this, I've got no idea." Of course, Bond only had to outrun a couple of even older Mercedes sedans in "Goldfinger." The host then slides into the shotgun seat of one of the ringers, with one-time Subaru-driving rally ace Mark Higgins behind the wheel. Higgins has been a stunt driver in four Bond films now, starting his tenure in a Land Rover Defender in "Quantum of Solace," working his way up to drifting the one-off Aston Martin DB10 at around 90 miles per hour through St. Peter's Square in The Vatican. Higgins explains a bit of what went into the DB5-looking stunt cars built for "No Time to Die," one of them built on a ladder frame chassis dressed in carbon fiber body panels, powered by a modern straight-six engine, suspended with Ohlins dampers. The directive was to get repeatability in tricky environments, and hey, more power and less weight is never a bad thing, either.  When Catchpole takes the track again behind the wheel of the stunt car, you'll want to turn on the closed captions. Even if you don't, Catchpole's barely audible exclamations and facial expressions make it clear which car he'd rather take home, and which he'd leave for the "misogynist alcoholic womanizer of a secret spy with really pretty unresolved violence issues." If all goes well, we'll see both in action — plus two more — when "No Time to Die" hits theaters in November. Related Video:

Cosworth briefly crows that Aston Valkyrie's 6.5L V12 has record horsepower

It's only natural that Cosworth would want the world to know that it's building the world's most powerful naturally-aspirated engine for the Aston Martin Valkyrie and Valkyrie AMR Pro. The timing of when the world should know about it, that's at issue. Yesterday the English engine maker's official Twitter account posted a picture of the barely-there coupe and the line, "We're famous for breaking records and our latest engine, the Aston Martin Valkyrie 6.5-litre V12, will be the world's most powerful naturally aspirated road engine with 1,130bhp." Two tags accompanied the post, #Cosworth and #AstonMartinValkyrie. About 90 minutes later, the tweet disappeared. The likely issue is that Cosworth got ahead of Aston Martin's official confirmation of Valkyrie outputs, something we're more used to from patent offices and Chinese model makers. The question is what output is Cosworth really talking about, and which car. All of last year, however, various reports had the street-legal Valkyrie making 1,130 hp. A Road & Track report attributed "nearly 1,000 hp" coming from the NA V12, the remaining 130 from a kinetic energy recovery system working the front axle. Hence, we're not sure if Cosworth's talking about its own engine alone at 1,130 hp, or its engine with the KERS. But then there's this: At the launch of the Valkyrie AMR Pro during the Geneva Motor Show this year, Aston Martin said the track-only Valkyrie AMR Pro would enjoy "a combined power output of more than 1100 bhp — more than the Valkyrie road car and a figure than comfortably exceeds the magic 1:1 power-to-weight ratio." The truth's a mystery for now, which is just as Aston Martin would want it. If Cosworth's engine really does make 1,130 hp on its own, that would be monstrous, and it would mean the automaker's been playing a serious game of English understatement. Even if Cosworth included the hybrid help, however, an NA V12 with 1,000 ponies would take the crown. The only competition is the 6.5-liter V12 in the Ferrari 812 Superfast, and that's 211 horses adrift. The quad-digit figures expected from Mercedes-AMG Project One and McLaren Speedtail require turbochargers, as does the just-teased V8 going into the Shelby Tuatara. With the first of 150 Valkyrie road car deliveries scheduled for next year, we probably don't have that much longer to wait to find out. Related Video: