Thank Frankel it's Friday: Taking an old dog to Le Mans – has it learnt new tricks?

Perhaps I should, therefore, be in a Jaguar, in memory of the marque that won the race all those years ago, but sadly Jaguar has not raced as a works team at Le Mans since 1991. Perhaps the new rules that will be introduced at the start of the next decade will entice them back. The idea – if I understand it correctly – is for a top prototype category still using hybrid power but massively simplified so you don’t have to be a Porsche, Audi or Toyota to be able to afford it.

So, the Aston it is because it too is 30 this year so we’ll have something to celebrate together. And actually, I’m more than usually confident it’ll get there because it belongs to Aston Martin’s Vice President for Marketing Simon Sproule who started in PR at about the same time I started in journalism and, from the look of it, did a rather better job of it. The car has been prepped by Aston Martin Works Service in Newport Pagnell so it’s probably as good as new. Or better. And the gorgeousness of the anticipation I’m feeling right now is that I have absolutely no idea what to expect of it.

Now that I’m in the car (at least as you read this) and Simon can no longer withdraw his kind offer, I can share with you that I was quite disappointed when the Virage was new all those years ago. I’d loved the brawny V8 Vantage that preceded it but the Virage was less of what my younger, less politically correct self might have hazarded to call a man’s car all those years ago. It wasn’t that quick despite the 32-valve heads Reeves Callaway had developed for its already elderly V8 and its handling seemed rather, well, middle-aged. And, let’s face it, underneath it all was a structure evolved from the Lagonda which was evolved from the 1967 DBS which was itself was evolved from the 1959 DB4. State of the art it was not.

But will I see it differently now that I am rather middle-aged myself and that the performance game has moved on so far, the fact it wasn’t as quick as a 911 Turbo 30 years will be an utter irrelevance?

I know no better than you. For the truth is I hold two inconveniently conflicting views on this subject. One says that while time can remove the appeal of cars that were once perceived to be good, it rarely works the other way around. A car that wasn’t that great when it was new is unlikely to have turned into one three decades later – cars are not wines and do not mature over time, no matter what you might read in the classic magazines.

Except that just a few do. No longer seen in the context of the cars against which they competed in period they can be judged on their own merits, and not as everyday cars that must do well across a broad raft of disciplines, but simply for their charm. The most recent example I can recall was the BMW Z8 which I considered something of a poseur’s car 18 years ago, a massively missed opportunity by its creator to produce something truly deserving of the ‘Ultimate Driving Machine’ moniker. And then I got to drive one recently and was captivated by it. I didn’t care that it was merely bloody rapid instead of stupidly fast, I just loved the way it rode, the sound of its V8, the exquisite interior and lovely manual gearbox.

And if the BMW can buck the trend, I would hope the old Aston can too. It will at the very least sound and look incredible, swaddle me in leather, provide an Olde English view across its wooden dash and provide one of the most appropriate ways of getting to Le Mans that exists. It also has one other advantage not fitted to any Virage I drove in period: a 6.3-litre Aston Works Service engine conversion that should put 500bhp under my right foot. So, whether the car is the most technically accomplished car of its era or not seems not terribly relevant any more – so long as the French fuel strikes mean I’m able to find enough petrol to cope with what I imagine is a prodigious thirst, I expect we’re going to have a ball.