Vantage

Vantage (pronounced van-tij or vahn-tij)

(1) A position, condition, or place affording some advantage or a commanding view, expressed usually as "vantage point".

(2) An advantage or superiority (almost obsolete except when used by Aston-Martin).

(3) In lawn tennis, short for advantage, a "vantage game" the first game played after the set is deuce (40-40) (now thought rare as deliberate use but "advantage" is often heard that way although some umpires may well prefer the clipping).

1250-1300: From the Middle English, from the Anglo-French, by apheresis from the Old French avantage (advantage or profit).  The English advantage was from the early fourteenth century Middle English avantage & avauntage (position of being in advance of another), from the twelfth century Old French avantage (advantage, profit; superiority), from avant (before), either via an unrecorded Late or Medieval Latin abantaticum or from the Latin abante (in front; before), from the primitive Indo-European root ant (front, forehead).  The spelling with a "d" was one of those mistakes which endured to become "correct English", the “a-”, being supposed to be from the Latin ad-(from the preposition ad (to, towards), from the Proto-Italic ad, from the primitive Indo-European héd (near, at).  The meaning “any condition favorable to success, a favoring circumstance” (ie the opposite of “a disadvantage”) emerged in the late fifteenth century while the use in the scoring in tennis is documented from the 1640s.  The familiar modern phrase take advantage of was in used by the late fourteenth century in the sense of (“avail oneself of” & “impose oneself upon” while the meaning “to have the advantage of (someone) (ie have superiority over) dates from the 1560s.  The phrase "vantage point" was first noted in 1865, a variation of the earlier "vantage ground" which was in military & hunting use by the early seventeenth century.  The early English alternative vauntage, soon faded from use and the derived forms, vantages (third-person singular simple present) vantaging (present participle) and vantaged (simple past and past participle) are now wholly obsolete. Vantahe is a noun & verb; the noun plural is vantages.

The phrase “coigne of vantage” (a good position for observation, judgment, criticism, action etc) was from Act 1, Scene 6 in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Macbeth (circa 1605) in which King Duncan and his cohort ride up to Macbeth's castle.

DUNCAN

This castle hath a pleasant seat. The air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.

BANQUO

This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here. No jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle.
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate.

Coigne was a variant of quoin, from coin and has been used variously to mean (1) a projecting corner or angle; a cornerstone, (2) the keystone of an arch, (3) a wedge used in typesetting, (4) in crystallography, a corner of a crystal formed by the intersection of three or more faces at a point and (5) in geology, an original angular elevation of land around which continental growth has taken place.

Vantage points: Traditionally, the best way to secure a vantage point is to seek a degree of elevation to achieve the desired "line of sight" (Lindsay Lohan (photo shoot for Vogue (Spanish edition) August 2009, left) but the functionality of just about any spot can usually be enhanced by the use of a telescope, binoculars, opera glasses of any appropriate form of magnification (Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011, right).

DB2 Vantage DHC

The word Vantage was first used by Aston Martin in 1950 on the DB2.  The title indicated an uprated engine specification: a pair of larger carburetors and a higher compression ratio which added 20bhp to the standard DB2’s 105.  Almost 250 were built with both saloon (AM’s term for a two door coupé) and drophead coupé (DHC, the term then often used by English manufacturers to refer to "formal convertibles (which some call cabriolets)" (as opposed to the more performance-oriented roadsters)) coachwork.

DB4 Vantage Saloon

Strangely, although the Vantage moniker caught on with aficionados, it wouldn’t be again used by the factory for almost a decade.  The DB4 Vantage was released with the Series IV cars in 1961, now with triple carburetors and a higher compression ratio, the cylinder head was also revised with bigger valves, the package yielding 266bhp, some ten per cent more than a standard DB4.  The Vantage this time was visibly distinct as well as technically upgraded, gaining the faired-in headlights and bright aluminum trim from the earlier DB4 GT.

DB5 Vantage Saloon

While mechanically almost identical to the Series IV, the more spacious Series V Vantage of 1962, the last in the DB4 line, was stylistically different, being essentially a prototype for the upcoming DB5.  The two are virtually indistinguishable; indeed one Series V DB4 Vantage was used alongside a DB5 in the filming of the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964).  Of the 141 built, the rarest and most desirable were the half-dozen with the optional DB4 GT engine.

DB5 Vantage DHC

The Vantage option remained on the books when the DB5 was released in 1965.  Now with triple Weber carburetors, the factory rated the Vantage at 325bhp, a jump of 40 over the standard engine and only 68 of the 887 saloons were built to the Vantage specification.  More rare still was the DB5 Vantage convertible, a mere eight of the 123 built although, over the decades, a great many of both have be upgraded to the Vantage standard.

DB6 Vantage Saloon

Introduced in 1965 and made in two series, the now Kham-tailed DB6 remained in production until 1970.  The DB6 Vantage was mechanically identical to its predecessor but there were detail changes.  Retained was the Vantage badge introduced with the DB5, but the nomenclature was now added as a discreet script on the side strakes and much attention was devoted to improving passenger comfort.  At this point, while coupés continued to be labelled saloons, convertibles were now styled Volantes (a derivation of the Italian word for "flying").  Spread between two series, out of a total DB6 production of 1739, 405 Saloons and 42 Vantage Volantes were built.

DBS Vantage Saloon

By the mid 1960s, the market in which Aston Martin competed, although larger, was more contested than even a decade earlier.  As early as 1961, Jaguar’s E-Type had, at a fraction of the cost, matched the DBs in style and performance, if not quality and their V12 project was known to be well-advanced.  The Italian thoroughbreds, Ferrari, Maserati and Lamboghini, all with eight and twelve cylinder engines, were setting new standards and there was now an array of trans-Atlantic hybrids which combined exquisite European coachwork with cheap, effortless and reliableAmerican V8 power.  Aston Martin’s six cylinder engine, Vantage tweaked or not, was starting to look technologically bankrupt.  Accordingly, the factory developed both a new car, the DBS, and their own V8.  For a variety of reasons, the V8 wasn’t ready by the time the DBS, a typical Aston Martin mix of traditional and modern, was released in 1967 so the familiar six, again available in Standard or Vantage form was carried over from the DB6 although, to counter increased weight, the Vantage version boasted revised camshafts.

Vantage Saloon

The DBS and DB6 were produced in parallel until 1970, the last few DB6s built after the DBS V8’s release the previous year.  The last of the six cylinder DBSs came in a run of seventy named simply Vantage, all with the revised twin-headlight coachwork introduced in 1972 which would serve the line essentially unchanged until 1989.  Historically, the final seventy were then a unique anomaly, the first time a Vantage was not the most but the company's least potent offering.  After the last was built in 1973, there would not for twenty years be another six-cylinder Aston Martin.

V8 Vantage Volante

That historical quirk was certainly rectified after the Vantage’s half-decade hiatus, during which the first oil crisis of the early 1970s had transformed the market.  Most of the trans-Atlantic hybrids had been driven extinct, Jaguar had moved in a different direction, Mercedes-Benz had chosen not to compete, Lamborghini, Aston Martin and Maserati all had their own brushes with bankruptcy, Porsche were moving up-market to become a competitor and governments were imposing more and more regulations.  The 1977 Aston Martin Vantage took a different approach to the mid-engined Italian or turbo-charged German opposition.  Although there was much attention to aerodynamics and chassis dynamics, mostly it was about simple brute force, the additional power over the standard V8 gained by the traditional methods used in Vantages past and it proved effective, able to run with the Lamborghini Countach, the Ferrari BB and even the Porsche 911 Turbo of the time.  This time, the factory didn’t release a claimed power output, describing it instead as “adequate”.  Introduced in 1969, by the time production ended in 1989, the V8 range was regarded as "a glorious anachronism".

V8 Vantage Zagato Saloon

The Vantage, as both saloon and volante, remained in production until 1989 and served as the basis of the shorter, radical, and very rare, V8 Vantage Zagato coupé & convertible (presumably in deference to the Italian contribution, the tags "saloon" & "volante" were never used).  Zagato's coachwork during the 1950s had been sometimes quirky (the double-bubble roof a signature) but they tended to the orthodoxy of the era, exemplified by the DB4 GT Zagato coupé, twenty of which were built between 1960-1963.  As the century unfolded however, Zagato's lines became increasingly rectilinear and "interestingly unique" were sometimes described as "not conventionally beautiful" and the Vantage Zagato (1986-1990) was one of the less confronting.  Still, Zatago survives to this day while many European coachbuilders did not and the business has been in continuous operation since 1919, some half-dozen years after the formation of Aston Martin.

Virage Vantage V550 Saloon

High-priced brute force remained a gap in the market and Aston Martin continued its commitment with a Virage-based supercharged Vantage in 1993 which, by 1998, was running twin superchargers, its 600bhp making it then the most powerful production powerplant in the world, making the Vantage capable of close to 200 mph (320 km/h) and for those who wanted even more power there was a run of forty V8 Vantage Le Mans" versions, built to mark the fortieth anniversary of the victory in the 24 hour endurance classic of Carroll Shelby (1923–2012) & Roy Salvadori (1922–2012) in an Aston Martin DBR1/300; Shelby would go on to found Shelby American and produce the AC Cobra, the mid century's benchmark in brute force.  Virage production ended in 2000 and for a platform which started life in 1969 it endured remarkably well.  By the year 2000, some of the competition were objectively "better cars" but there was nothing else like the big Aston Martins left and its retirement was regretted by many.

DB7 Vantage Saloon

The DB7, first shown at the now defunct Geneva Motor Show in 1993, was the first six-cylinder Aston Martin in twenty years.  It was conservatively styled but the lines were greeted with acclaim and it proved an immediate success.  In 1999, a Vantage version was released and with the company now under the Ford corporate umbrella, it used a 5.9 litre (362 cubic inch) V12 engine developed in co-operation with Cosworth Technology.  It was the first time a Vantage wasn’t a development of the standard engine, the straight six in the DB7 being a different configuration and remarkably, by historic standards, the DB7 Vantage verged on mass-production: over four-thousand built were built over a four and a half year run which ended in 2003.

VH V8 Vantage Coupé

Ford were pleased by the sales and in 2003, again at the Geneva Motor Show, unveiled on the VH platform the AMV8 Vantage Concept, so well-received the order books were bulging by the time the production version was released in 2005.  It proved to be the most successful car in Aston Martin’s history and this time it really was mass-produced, necessitating construction of a second production line; eventually more than fifteen thousand would leave the factory.  Less brute force than before, the new V8 Vantage relied on technology to exceed the performance of most of its predecessors.  For those attracted by more performance or more exclusivity, in 2009, Aston Martin unveiled the V12 Vantage, weighing little more than its V8 sibling but boasting an additional hundred-odd horsepower and able to reach 190 mph (305 km/h).  In 2012, the V12 Vantage Zagato was added to the books.

V12 Vantage S

However, after the GFC (Global Financial Crisis), the expansion of the money supply (essentially governments giving cash to the rich) at the upper end of the market meant there was increasing taste for conspicuous consumption.  Like other manufacturers anxious to meet demand with supply, Aston Martin responded with a bespoke programme, offering degrees of customisation to the point of one-off creations but also, new product lines, hence the 2013 V12 Vantage S.  It joined the new generation of machines now able routinely to attain the 200mph (320 km/h) speeds first promised by the Italians in the early 1970s but not realised because of the means available at the time to defeat the formidable opposition of physics.  At a tested 205mph (330 km/h), the terminal velocity of the V12 Vantage S made it the fastest Aston Martin ever and, in a nicely nostalgic touch, in 2016, even a manual gearbox was offered.

Vantage Roadster

The times were changing and there was an end-of-an-era feel when the new Vantage was released in 2018.  Fitted with a Mercedes-Benz-AMG four litre V8 (with fuel consumption and emissions generation numbers which even half a decade earlier would have been thought unfeasibly low), it didn't quite match the top-end performance of the V12 but was judged by reviewers to be a more practical day-to-day proposition to own while being less environmentally thuggish.  There was some regret that things were not quite the way things used to be done but to the surprise of many, the factory late in 2021 announced there would be one, last V12 Vantage and it was released the following March, 333 of the 700 horsepower machines produced, a convertible version announced some months later in a run limited to 249.  For 2024 and beyond, the 4.0 litre V8 Vantage will continue and advances in electronics and aerodynamics now guarantee each will top 200 mph.  The commendable reductions in emissions notwithstanding, Aston Martin will not have been struck from any of Greta Thunberg’s (b 2003) lists so those who can are advised to enjoy a V8 or V12 Vantage while they can.

Aston Martin Vantage Production Numbers

DB2 Vantage: 248 saloon and DHC

DB4 Vantage: 135 (plus 6 DB4 GT Vantages)

DB5 Vantage: 68 saloon (plus 8 DHCs)

DB6 Vantage: 335 saloon (plus 29 Volantes)

DB6 Vantage MkII: 70 saloon (plus 13 Volantes)

DBS Vantage:290 saloons

Vantage 70 saloons

V8 Vantage: 372 saloon (plus 194 Volantes)

V8 Vantage Zagato: 52 coupés (plus 37 convertibles)

Vantage/V8 Vantage: 273 saloon (plus 40 specials)

DB7 V12 Vantage: 2,086 coupe (plus 2,056 Volantes)

V8 Vantage (VH): 15,458 coupe (plus 6,231 Roadsters)

V12 Vantage: 2,957 (all types including V12 Vantage S)

V12 Vantage (2021-2022) (333 coupés plus 249 convertibles)

Gabardine

Gabardine (pronounced gab-er-deen or gab-ah-deen)

(1) A firm, tightly woven fabric of worsted, cotton, polyester, or other fiber, with a twill weave.

(2) An ankle-length loose coat or frock worn by men, associated especially with Jews, in the medieval period.

(3) In casual use, any of various other garments made of gabardine, once associated especially with raincoats worn by children (mostly archaic).

1510–1520: The spelling gabardine is a variant spelling of gaberdine, almost certainly from the Old French gauvardine & gallevardine (a long, loose outer garments much associated with pilgrims), from the Middle High German wallewart (pilgrimage (Wallfahrt in the German)), from the Spanish gabardina, possibly a conflation of gabán (from the Arabic qabā (men’s over-garment) and tabardina (diminutive of tabard or tabard (a sleeveless jerkin consisting only of front and back pieces with a hole for the head))).  The construct of the German Walfahrt was the Proto-Germanic wal- (source also of Old High German wallon (to roam, wander, go on a pilgrimage) + the Proto-Germanic faran (to go), from the primitive Indo-European per- (to lead, pass over).  The evolution of the word in Spanish was probably influenced by the Spanish gabán (overcoat) & tabardina (coarse coat) although the alternative etymology suggest it was an extended form of gabán and the Spanish word was borrowed and underwent alterations in Old French.  Gaberdine was documented from the 1510s while gabardine in the sense of "dress, covering" dates from the 1590s.  The meaning "closely woven cloth" dates from 1904 and the tightly woven fabric remains popular with designers for suits, pants, jackets, summer wear and especially overcoats.  Originally made from worsted wool, the twill weave fabric is now often rendered with synthetic and cotton blends and is renowned for its versatility and durability.

Lindsay Lohan, in Ami three button jacket and flare-fit trousers in wool gabardine with Ami small Deja-Vu bag, Interview Magazine, November 2022.  The car is a Jaguar XJS (1975-1996) convertible.  Jaguar didn't offer full convertible coachwork until 1988 but under contract, between 1986-1988, the Ohio-based coachbuilders Hess & Eisenhardt converted some 2000 coupés.  Unlike many out-sourced conversions, the Hess & Eisenhardt cars were in some ways more accomplished than the factory's own effort, the top folding completely into the body structure (al la the Mercedes-Benz R107 (1971-1989) or the Triumph Stag (1969-1977)).  However, to achieve that, the fuel tank had to be removed, replaced by twin tanks and this necessitated duplicated plumbing and pumps, something which sometimes proved troublesome.  There were reports of fires but the tale Jaguar arranged buy-backs so they might be consigned to the crusher is an internet myth. 

The diary (The Struggle for Survival 1940-1965) entry of Winston Churchill’s (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) physician (Sir Charles Wilson (Lord Moran); 1882-1977)) for 6 August 1942 records that in Cairo, there were some two-thousand, apparently unproductive, British Army officers who wore a very smart uniform called a gabardine and that in the slang of other units, they were called “the gabardine swine”.

The Gadarene Swine by Alan Coustick.

The play on words is based on the New Testament tale of the Miracle of the Gadarene Swine, referred to sometimes in academic writing as the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac.  The miracle performed by Christ is the driving from a man demons which are allowed to take refuge in a herd of swine which then run down a slope into a lake where they drown.  The miracle is recounted in the three Synoptic (Matthew, Mark & Luke) Gospels, but not in that of John.  Matthew’s (8:28–34) account is short and differs in detail from Mark (5:1–20) & Luke (8:26–39), both of which include narrative descriptions which have informed the exorcism rites of the church ever since and the story has since Augustine attracted theologians and scholars who have found layers to interpret and it’s the origin too of the English proverbial word gadarene which describes or cautions against a “headlong or potentially disastrous rush to do something".  The Biblical reference to Gadarene is geographical although it’s uncertain exactly where the events transpired.

In philosophy, the Gadarene Swine Fallacy (GSF) is the logical fallacy of supposing (1) because a group is in the right formation, it is therefore on the right course or (2) supposing that because an individual has strayed from the group and isn't in formation, that they are off course.  The point of the GSF is that regardless of the vantage point from which a thing is viewed, mere appearances do not of necessity contain sufficient information accurately to convey what is right or wrong.  Moral theologians, legal theorists and others have been both satisfied and troubled by the miracle.  Saint Augustine's (354–430) immensely influential view was the story illustrated the special status God granted to man in the universe; that Christians have no obligations to God's other creatures, Jesus sacrificing two thousand swine to save the soul of one man and had it been a herd of ten-thousand he'd have seen them drowned too.  Augustine didn’t discuss the supposed right of Jesus to send to their death a large herd of pigs presumably the property of another who may have relied on them to feed and care for his family but this has since been discussed.

The Christian position must be that Christ is a Divine Being and therefore sovereign over the entire creation; the world is his dominion: “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10).  That includes pigs and his actions gained the approbation (Mark 5:20) of those who watched the exorcism for they “marveled” (although they also asked him to leave town, the reasons for that of some theological dispute).  Technically too, Jesus could have quoted the Old Testament prohibitions of Leviticus who, among his list of abominations condemned swine as “unclean” (Leviticus 11) and thus fit for little but death by demonic possession.  Leviticus and Christ would also have agreed that whatever value some might place on the heads of two-thousand swine, it is nothing compared to the worth of one human soul.

Even before animal rights activism became main-stream, the orthodox Augustinian view (and those of the neo-Augustinian apologists) had been criticized.  The hardly impartial atheist Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) discussed the miracle in Why I am Not a Christian (1927), finding it appalling that someone omnipotent and therefore presumably able just to cast the demons into oblivion chose instead to kill two-thousand pigs.  Modern activists Like Tash Petersen would doubtless be harsher still in their judgement than Lord Russell.

The Miracle of the Gadarene Swine (circa 1000), unknown artist; Canterbury, England; tempera colors, gold leaf & ink on parchment; The J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

In the centre of this miniature removed from a Gospel book, Jesus and his followers confront two men whose half-dressed, unkempt state suggest they are possessed by evil demons.  Jesus performs an exorcism, transferring the demons into a herd of swine.  Matthew wrote that the herd "ran violently down a steep place into the sea," where "they perished in the waters". The illuminator closely followed the story as Matthew described it, depicting the swine hurtling down the cliff into the sea at the bottom of the page. At the top right, shepherds run to the city to report the miracle.  In the work, the events are arranged in three horizontal bands, the main focus on the middle figures whose emphatic gestures and tense body movements recount the vivid story.

Épatant

Épatant (pronounced a-pat-on)

Something startling or shocking, especially if unconventional

Circa 1910s: An adjective in French formed from the present participle of épater (to flabbergast), the construct being é- +‎ patte (paw) +‎ -er.  The é- prefix is from the Old French es-, from the Latin ex- & ē- and was used to indicate away or moving away from.  Patte is from the Middle French, from the Old French pade & pate (paw, foot of an animal), from the Vulgar Latin patta (paw, foot), borrowed from the Frankish patta (paw, sole of the foot), from the Proto-Germanic pat- & paþa- (to walk, tread, go, step), of uncertain origin and relation.  Possibly it was from the primitive Indo-European (s)pent- & (s)pat- (path; to walk), a variant of the primitive Indo-European pent- & pat- (path; to go).  It was cognate with the Dutch poot (paw) and the Low German pedden (to step, tread); it's related to both pad & path.  The suffix -er is from the Latin -āre, used to form infinitives of first-conjugation verbs (many of these verbs directly descended from Latin, rather than from stem + suffix).

Cubism

It’s probably no longer possible for a style of visual art to shock.  That may be because everything possible has been done or that the representational promiscuity of the last century has dulled collective sensitivity, certainly among Western audiences.  Put simply, new being no longer possible, nor is the shock of the new (Shock of the New (1972) is a strangely neglected book by art critic Ian Dunlop (b 1940), exploring seven exhibitions of the modern period, from the Salon des Refuses (Paris, 1863) to Joseph Goebbels’ Degenerate Art show (Munich, 1937); the title later re-used by Australian art critic Robert Hughes (1938–2012) for his 1980 TV show).

In the early days of modernity, painting genuinely could shock as cubism did in the years before the First World War.  Essentially a simplification of form and deconstruction of perspective, cubism played with ideas of mass, time and space, distorting deliberating the techniques artists had honed over the centuries in creating the three dimensional illusions rendered on inherently flat canvases.  The early works were still recognizably representational but soon, the movement seemed to morph into something which existed to shock and the geometric touches grew in intensity, sometimes overwhelming the represented forms, some of the later work really pure visual abstraction, the sort of self-indulgent technical ecstasy Comrade Stalin would later, in a similar context, condemn as “formalism”.

The origin of cubism is generally traced back to Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), a portrait of five prostitutes in a style influenced by the African tribal art which the artist had seen at the Palais du Trocadéro, a Paris ethnographic museum.  Curiously, Picasso chose to show the work only to fellow artists and it went unseen by the public until an exhibition in 1916.  Others certainly adopted its techniques, defining the first era of Cubism which came to be known as Analytical Cubism, marked by depictions of a subject from multiple vantage points at once, creating a fractured, multi-dimensional effect expressed usually with a small palette of colors.  The term cubism was used first in 1908 by French critic Louis Vauxcelles (1870-1943) but wasn’t widely employed until the press adopted in 1911 and it was then often used in a derogatory sense.  The reputation of both Picasso and cubism has since improved and when assessing the drip painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), the collector Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) could think of no higher compliment than him being “...the greatest painter since Picasso”.  Of course, many who thought their own eye for art quite well-trained didn't agree with Ms Guggenheim.  In 1945, just after the war, Duff Cooper (1890–1954), then serving as Britain's ambassador to France, came across Picasso leaving an exhibition of paintings by English children aged 5-10 and in his diary noted the great cubist saying he "had been much impressed".  "No wonder" added the ambassador, "the pictures are just as good as his".

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), oil on canvas by Pablo Picasso.

Although it’s convenient to think of Picasso’s 1907 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon as the first cubist painting and thus the beginning of Cubism, art critics are a schismatic lot, some tracing the origin of the style to earlier decades while others suggest it was the first proto-Cubist work, containing enough of the essential elements of the genre to be linked yet not sufficiently distinct from earlier traditions to belong.  These critiques emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, the dying days of modernity, a time when the post-war expansion of academic art criticism gave rise to an industry of revisionism so unrelenting that post-modernism was perhaps inevitable.