There was a moment that perfectly captured the split personality of the Aston Martin Vantage. M25. Foul weather. Long snaking lines of cars. Perfectly ensconced in the stately home library-like surroundings of the V8 Vantage’s cabin.

And then… Christ on a bike! A tickle of throttle in fifth gear at little more than tickover saw the back tyres surrender their grip of the road surface. In thick traffic at 60mph the hulking great Aston stepped into an unprovoked slide, at which point my heart jumped to record bpm, buttocks clenched, lips uttered a profanity or two and my hands were a blur attempting to prevent the impending pile up.

Anyone who witnessed this may have scoffed at the toff showing off. But the truth of the matter was that the new Vantage was behaving like the feared headmaster you had at school. The slightest misstep would unleash hell and fury.

To this day I remember that moment with crystal clarity: the Vantage was (and remains) the very definition of a brute in a suite. During the road test, we ran the performance numbers and compared it with a standard V8 and a DB7. Its in-gear acceleration squeezed the breath from your lungs like a bear hug from Geoff Capes. And all the way around the test track, no matter how fast the corner, the engine of the V8 Vantage had the power and, more significantly, torque, to pitch the tail into lurid, tyre-smoking slides that would last as long as your nerve, and skill, held.

This partly explains why the V8 Vantage tried its best to buck me off the M25. The new tyres had been subjected to several days of decidedly exuberant driving, and the tread had been reduced a depth of around 3mm – which looks fine when viewed at a standstill at a deserted test track where there’s nothing to hit, but most certainly is not when mixing it in motorway traffic in the rain.

To a twenty-something like me, it was by far the more mind-altering experience than club nights at London’s Whirl-Y-Gig. Here was a car that resembled an antique Chesterfield sofa complete with a stag trophy above a roaring open fire, yet it could thump its way along the road like Lawrence Dallaglio on the scent of the world cup trophy. How on earth could a near two-ton heavyweight pile on speed like a Ferrari F40 running downhill with the wind behind it?

The secret was actually not-so-secret at all. The bulging, bluff nose of the V8 Vantage barely contained the Aston’s powerhouse of an engine. The Tadek Marek-designed 5.3-litre V8, which had done service since the ‘70s and most recently in the lukewarmly-received Virage, had been reworked by the tiny team behind the Vantage to accept a pair of Eaton M90 superchargers. These raised power to 550bhp (at 6500rpm) and torque to a matching 550lb ft (at 4000rpm) and promptly made it the most powerful production car money could buy in 1993. (And also led to some calling it the V550, after the later £43,000 upgrade to V600 spec.)

Ah, yes, money. It was not only potent but pricey too. As a road tester who waited for the soles of his shoes to let in water before replacing them, I wouldn’t have been able to grasp the true significance of its other-worldly price. Aston charged £177,600 for the Vantage – more than £373,000 today. You needed to be a big hitter in the city or the landed gentry to write such a cheque without sweaty palms.

Yet the car was very much pulled together on a laughable, shoestring budget, in a shed at Newport Pagnell.

“The engineering department was really tiny and the budget was almost non-existent,” Steve Waddingham told Top Gear.  Waddingham worked at Aston in the lead-up to the Vantage’s 1993 launch. “Testing was done at Santa Pod raceway and cold mornings at Newport Pagnell. It wasn’t quite like it is today, we couldn’t go off to a world-renowned test track. But then the world was less complicated, and the expectation level was different, from customers and everybody. Safety, emissions... all that sort of stuff was fairly rudimentary.

“There are those beautiful handmade aluminium panels on the outside, and a massive welded frame beneath. It was the same idea as a DB5 Superleggera, just no longer so leggera. The guys who were hammering these panels had made everything from the DB4 onwards.”

My abiding memory is of that boilerhouse engine. Once it got going there was no stopping the Vantage. With all that mid-range torque and top-end muscle it just hauled and hauled and then hauled some more, the ultra-long gearing running to 90mph in second alone. At 70mph in sixth it was barely running at more than tickover.

The top speed was a proven 186mph, 0-60mph took 4.6 seconds and the 0-100mph dash 10.1 seconds. A Bentley Turbo R wouldn’t see which way the Vantage went. Yet it also proved manageable. (Or at least, it was on dry days.) That was partly because Jackie Stewart, at the time a member of the Aston Martin board, had a hand in the final fine-tuning of the Vantage.

The rear suspension ditched the Virage’s complex A-frame and went back to the classic de Dion set-up, while springs, dampers and anti-rollbars were all beefed-up. It also boasted 18-inch wheels, 285mm section Goodyear Eagle tyres, mammoth 362mm front brake discs and Group C-spec callipers, and an uprated ZF six-speed manual that could handle the engine’s output.

Then there was the cabin. It contained half a forest and a small herd of cows (nine, no less) and had additional plush Connolly-hide headrests to help cushion the back of one’s head when the pair of Eaton superchargers got to work. It was like taking tea at the Ritz, only the pleasant ambience could quickly be spoiled by watching the fuel gauge: at something like an average of 12 or 13mpg, the Vantage drunk like Keith Floyd let loose in the cellar of a vineyard.

No doubt about it, these are very special motor cars. They have presence to spare, deliver an overdose of occasion and make a Ferrari F40 seem common. Just 239 examples rolled off the Newport Pagnell production line, between 1993 and 1999.

For so long, prices of the Vantage lingered at £50,000, but the past few years have seen it gain wider recognition for offering so much for so little and prices have risen comfortably past £200,000 for the best examples. (Track prices at The Classic Valuer.)

But above all else, it is that supercharged driving experience that makes this a car to savour. Quite unlike anything before or since, attempting to tame a Vantage is like trying to cap an erupting volcano. There are forces at work here which few of us will ever experience, and it’s that unique character that makes it one for enthusiasts and collectors with a sense of humour.

It also represents the ending of the ways of old Aston Martin, a car that took 1200 hours to build when a Ford Fiesta was made in just eight. Recalling when the Vantage ended production, Waddingham remembers how “four panel beaters had done 49 years each; they started on the same day and finished on the same day.” Truly, then, the end of an era.

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