Nicholas Mee and Company has specialised in selling, maintaining and restoring Aston Martins for 25 years. We went along for a taste of Aston Martin heaven.
Video: The ultimate Aston Martin showroom
It might seem an exaggeration to call anywhere other than Gaydon ‘Aston Martin heaven’, but bear with us.
Inside the Nicholas Mee showroom in Hertfordshire are very finest, rarest and most curious machines from the marque’s history – from DB4 GT to One-77, and everything in-between.
It just so happened that the oldest and one of the newest cars both cost well into seven figures. At the more affordable end of the Aston Martin spectrum were machines such as the outgoing V8 Vantage, DB9, a rare manual DBS V12 and the original V12 Vanquish.
60 years of Astons under one roof
The company specialises in everything from classic Astons of the 1950s, all the way through to the V8- and V12-powered supercars of the last 20 years.
Officially, that’s from 1950 all the way up to the very last Rapide S – a car that’s still in production. New-generation Aston Martins like the DB11, new Vantage and DBS Superleggera have a few years under the official dealer umbrella yet.
A cathedral to Aston Martin
The cars are only half the story, though. Having moved from London around this time last year, everything here is absolutely pristine.
From the farmhouse aesthetic of the service shops, with old-school supercharged Vantages in for work, to the immaculate showroom – architecturally, this place is as beautiful as the cars.
Zagato Astons old and new
Yes, the cars – we already mentioned the DB4 and the One-77. Add to that a smattering of Zagato-bodied and styled cars, from an 80s Vantage to the very latest Vanquish Volante. They’ve just got a lovely DB7 GT Zagato in stock, too.
On the 80s Vantage Zagato, they actually had several. One was a race-prepared car with a road-friendly interior put back in. A Vantage Zagato ‘GT3 RS’, if you will.
An Aston Martin Vantage with a racing V12
Then there’s the really special stuff. Flying under the radar (until we were made aware), was the Vantage RS Concept of 2007 – a one-off designed to show the world how cool a V12-powered ‘new’ Vantage would be.
Needless to say, it went down a treat, given the V12 Vantage went into production two years later.
The RS is an altogether different beast to the production car, however. Hundreds of kilos lighter, thanks to a numerous carbon components, its V12 (based on the racing DBRS9 unit) packs 600hp. That’s 90hp more than the production version.
It wouldn’t be until 2015’s Vantage GT12 that power would near those numbers in a Vantage, or indeed any naturally-aspirated Aston.
One-77: the original Aston Martin hypercar
Well, that is if you don’t include the 750hp 7.3-litre V12 in the One-77. It’s one of the most fascinating, beautiful and stunningly engineered hypercars ever conceived, and it’s almost entirely forgotten about.
Want to know more about the One-77? Watch our video above as we take an in-depth look at some of the cars mentioned.
Anyway, that’s Nicholas Mee, proprietor of some of the finest Aston Martins ever made. Unlike many exotic car dealerships, they welcome people in to see and learn about their rarefied stock. As if you needed an excuse…
