After 13 years in production, Aston Martin’s beautiful DB9 is bidding farewell. While the design is still jaw-dropping, the bones of the car were getting old, outpaced by newer, more high-tech luxury sports coupes. But while we’re thrilled by the shiny newness of the DB11, we really ought to stop and celebrate the DB9. It might be the most important car Aston Martin ever made.

The DB9 was a beacon of hope for Aston Martin when it debuted in 2003. The 1970s and 1980s hadn’t been kind to Aston Martin. The automaker had a much-needed hit with the DB7, of which more than 9000 examples were sold between 1994 and 2004, but it was not without flaws. The DB7 was the first new Aston developed under Ford’s stewardship, but it was based on a Jaguar platform that was already nearly 20 years old at the time of the car?s introduction in 1993. The DB9, though, was the closest thing to an all-new Aston Martin in years, the car that finally brought the company into the 21st century. A version of Aston’s V-12?which was derived from Ford’s mid-1990s Duratec V-6?was carried over from the DB7 Vantage and the V12 Vanquish, but everything else was thoroughly modern.

The centerpiece was Aston’s aluminum-intensive Vertical Horizontal (VH) platform, previously used only in the limited and very pricey V12 Vanquish, and was both lighter and stronger than the DB7’s hodgepodge platform. Design, courtesy of Ian Callum and Henrik Fisker, was a signifi...