Here we have a $130,000US automobile, and the trademark, most recognizable signature element of the car, is made like a 5 dollar toy from China.

Im talking about, yes........... the front grill.

These six slats barely fit into the uprights with enough friction to keep wind from pushing them out down into the lower hidden area of the oil cooler. the slats themselves can be pulled out by a 3 year old baby. If this is ANY indication of any other part of the car that has been designed with such boarderline, neglect......... Im a bit worried!

i noticed movement before and used a dab of auto glue to hold one of the uprights, that is not bolted to the car, in place. this morning, i noticed that it was missing. took the fashion cover off the top of the radiator and began looking around , hoping to find it. yet, a corner of the part, in a completely inaccessible area, was seen. I used one of those long 3ft grabers to reach down in there, and luckily got a corner of it and fished it up and out. wheew!

I pulled all the slats out to get room to work, and now i put them alll back. wow, this crap is supposed to not fall apart if you hit a bug at 150mph? think again. I put a dab of auto glue on all the slat openings and fit the horizontal slats back into place. It is a joke. hands down the worst design of any mechanical build of anything ive ever seen in my life. the designer for this should be fired and have a life time ban from designing anything for an automobile. Aston Martin should be SO ashamed of themselves that they offer a replacement grill to all cars with the grill, ever sold!

And why does a vanity engine cover need 12 Torx bolts???

The grill, if was supposed to snap apart , should be an entire different design.
(again, ALL MOST ALL simple kiddie toys snap together more securely) if they had half a dog brain, they would have just made the grill , pre-assembled 1 piece and have mounting tabs at the end and near the center.


sorry for the rant! BUT, ive never been so frustrated with something so simple. I felt like I was chasing my tail trying to put the one upright back on, as all the grill slats started to come apart in my hands.

 

Unless you are an authority is automotive safety and vehicle regulations for all world markets, I don't think you can say that these things are not designed that way for reasons that we don't know or understand, no matter how non-sensical, cheap, or poorly designed they seem.

 

I dont think it takes an "authority" to clearly see the deficiency of the design. plastic parts shouldnt just fall off the car. plastic cosmetic structures like this are not integral to the car's safety design or integrity. It's just a nuisance when it falls apart and needs to be glued , if you can find the parts that fell off.

 

+1. Aston isn't the only car maker of being accused of cutting corners to #1 keep costs lower or #2 increase profit margin. Sometimes these corners are visible to customers, sometimes they aren't. When it comes to safety or function, those priorities should be higher than cosmetic or comfort. But none of those should be that apparent on a vehicle from a constructor that has established itself as a luxury brand.

 

Yes it does take an authority. The parts may have been designed that way on purpose for reasons you don't know or understand. When Aston switched from the 8-bar grille design to the 6-bar grille, the means by which the vertical supports clamped on to the horizontal slats was changed. In the prior design each slat had a square notch at every point that it came in contact with the vertical support. A corresponding bump in the vertical support grabbed into the notch and kept the slat from moving laterally and prevented the slats from coming off as easily. This change was implemented around 2010. Do you know the reason it was done? Perhaps pedestrian safety regulations mandated the change. You can't simply assume that they just made a dumb design decision that they "should be ashamed of" or they did it as a "cost saving measure" as it would have been easier and cheaper to keep the existing design if those were the motivation for a change. We can't be arrogant enough to expect that we always know better than the engineers who design the product.

 

Exactly. I challenge ANYONE, (anyone from Aston lurking here) to find ANY car in the world that has a more obvious deficiency in design. find a another car where you can just take two fingers and take a part off the car with little or no effort. AND that part has to be a signature design part of the car. (i.e. grill, hood ornament, wing, etc).
in other words, if you took an Aston Martin through a drive through car wash, or let someone else wash your car that didn't know about this weakness, you would have grill parts all over the floor!

It's lame! and Aston owes all of us a grill.

 

"perhaps"??? you dont know either. But, what I do know, is that the part shouldnt fall off or be displaced or lost with NO contact with the outside world, let alone being brushed by a towel when being washed. can you imagine the scrubbers on a drive through car wash? (i know, sacrilegious, but just say'n) . im sure there is a way to make the grill, and have all the components stay in place and resist the finger strength of a 3 year old, a towel wiping it clean, or a bug hitting it at 100mph. The fact is, Aston didnt use that way, and made something clearly deficient. Beautiful, no doubt, but mechanically deficient.

 

Nothing wrong with my grill, so AM doesn't owe me a replacement. Maybe it's just your particular grill that is a problem? I wash mine all the time; nothing has ever loosened or fallen off.

 

Through many years of Aston ownership and multiple grilles of the 6 and 8 bar type, mine have never fallen off either. Sounds like maybe there's a problem with theirs or some previous owners damaged them.

 

This is always a possiblity . if so, and they are stout enough to pass the 3 year old finger test, i would owe an apology.

Try and pull one out with your fingers if they come right out, its a poor design.
and yes, i might just have a bad grill. looks new, but its very frail.

 

I have disassembled the entire grille (again, both 6 and 8 slat varieties) to wrap them in matte black vinyl and it took a huge amount of force to pull the vertical supports from the slats in each case. I guarantee you no 3-year old would be able to remove it. I had to use a towel to help cushion the force and protect my fingers so I wouldn't get hurt when they finally let go.

P.S. Like many plastic parts, there is a certain amount of wear caused by removal and insertion. This would definitely cause them to get loose if done repeatedly over time.

 

Just checked mine. Can't pull it out with my fingers. Also, it passed the bird test last fall LOL - at service this spring irish07 found a bird in my air box. I vaguely remember hitting one last fall and thinking it had bounced off: no blood, no feathers. Guess it passed right between the slats, which are no worse for the wear!

 

Owned 2 Astons and never had an issue. Sounds like a previous owner issue to me but I have no idea.

 

XWCGT- What year / model?

 

Where is the best place to source a 6 slat grill, actually want to make this change myself...?