Alan Judd

Motoring: Petrol-head heaven

Petrol-heads know about Millbrook, the 720-acre Bedfordshire proving ground bought by Vauxhall in the 1960s for testing cars and now, still owned by General Motors, shared with other manufacturers and the military.

Petrol-heads know about Millbrook, the 720-acre Bedfordshire proving ground bought by Vauxhall in the 1960s for testing cars and now, still owned by General Motors, shared with other manufacturers and the military. The latter tests some fearsome off-road beasts there but the former confine themselves to road circuits. There’s no shortage: the straight mile, skidpans, a five-lane, two-mile bowl, a handling circuit, a hill circuit with corners that hurl you sideways, simulated narrow roads, potholed (i.e., normal) roads, sections with varying surfaces, cambers, cobbles and kerb heights, and an enormous covered crash-test facility into which you may not even peep.

But not many petrol-heads get there. You enter by arrangement, once your camera has been removed, and you’re not allowed to ask anyone what they’re doing. That’s because they’re doing interesting things such as driving disguised test mules or hammering production cars 24/7 until they break. There was a lorry that did nothing but accelerate and brake all day, and on the bowl I saw a mysterious blonde doing fast laps in a new and dirty Bentley Mulsanne, stopping every so often to take notes before batting on. Who, why, how about lunch? You mustn’t ask, or even look.

Not that there’s time for such distractions if you’re there with Aston Martin. It has a permanent test facility and if you buy a new one they’ll take you along for a performance-driving course in the model of your choice. I didn’t buy one but I wangled a day. Two, actually.

We drove V8 and V12 Vantages, the DB9, DBS and Rapide. I concentrated on the V12 six-speed manual, in which it was indecently easy to reach 162mph on the straight mile, using second to fifth up to 6,500rpm. You have to drop anchor at the three-quarter-mile point because it ends in a banked turn which in better hands the car might cope with but I wasn’t looking for a flying lesson.

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