Aston Martin Vantage
Feels like it’s been on ice for years, so it’s itting that we’re driving an early version of the new Vantage in the Arctic Circle. By Ben Barry
Prototype driven on ice
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WENTY FIVE THOUSAND Aston Martin Vantages were built between 2005 and its recent demise, making Aston’s smallest model the company’s biggest seller ever. The Vantage replacement has some sizeable shoes to fill, then, and today we’re driving it. The garage shutter rolls up to reveal a final pre-production prototype ‘camouflaged’ in acid yellow and black like a poisonous snake. Outside there’s a test track carved from snow in the far north of Finland.
Aston sets up cars in these conditions as well as on dry roads, and a chassis that feels well balanced when pushed hard here should feel nicely sorted on grippier surfaces too.
Press the starter button and the 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 echoes off the walls with an animalistic roar, sounding every bit as potent as 503bhp and 505lb ft suggests with our car’s optional sports exhaust. It’s a fine match for a leaner, more aggressive steel bodyshell that channels both the DB10 (the one-off rebodied Vantage we saw James Bond drive in Spectre) and the Vulcan track car. It clothes a bonded aluminium architecture that pinches the DB11’s double-wishbone front and multi-link rear suspension, but is said to be 70 per cent new.
I snuggle down into a perfect driving position – high window line, low-set seats with a better blend of comfort and support than the DB11, an all-pervading sense that the Vantage places its driver at the centre of the action – and head into the wintry landscape; no minder, no caveats.
With just regular 20-inch Pirelli winter tyres – not the studs that locals use on public roads – I leave the stability control on at first, taking a couple of cautious laps to learn the layout and feel the grip. The electrically assisted steering seems light and fluid and aims the nose eagerly at every apex, underlining the sweet balance of an engine pushed far back in the chassis and an eight-speed transaxle that puts the gearbox over the rear axle – Aston says 49.5 per cent of the 1530kg (minus fluids) weight is over the nose.
The character of the V8 complements the chassis, feeling torque-rich at an amble and bloodthirsty when the tyres spin up and the revs shoot for the redline. The stability control is well calibrated, allowing some slip before it steps in to spare your blushes.
Deep breath, long push of the ESC button and instantly the electronic-induced stutters and jerks melt away, replaced by flowing arcs as the Vantage slides gracefully over the icy surface between snowbanks – and just occasionally spins rampantly out of control. Fast-paced electrically assisted steering slips from lock to lock with weighting that gives you a good sense of the grip levels below, and the V8’s eager throttle response combines with Aston’s first electronically controlled differential to make the rear end dance precisely to the tunes tapped out on the pedals.
Front and rear ends in perfect harmony, generous steering lock letting you recover from ludicrous drift angles, it’s easy to settle into a flowing rhythm. Just like the DB11, there still seems to be a fuzzy edge to the gear engagement, but the eight-speeder never baulks at a shift, delivering them with both rapidity and
refinement. Nice that the long paddleshifters are fixed to the steering column too, especially with the amount of wheel twirling needed here.
Carbon-ceramic brakes will be optional, but our car is equipped with standard stoppers – they’re superb, with well-defined feel and the ability to haul the Vantage down quickly despite the slippery conditions, and with little ABS intervention too.
Perhaps most impressive is how together the Vantage feels as you load it up on opposite lock and the suspension compresses over the outside wheels, and how benignly it glides back into line once you’ve stepped over the limit and need to get everything back under control – never does it jerk clumsily or threaten to snap back in the opposite direction. Mounting the rear subframe solidly – not isolating it with bushes as per the DB11 – doubtless helps this precision.
First impressions suggest a big improvement over the previous Vantage, which always felt a bit edgy below the limit, like you were sitting far back and waiting for it to bite – though it responded more progressively when actually provoked.
Normally on trips like this we’ll get just a few laps. Aston let us drive that one Vantage hard until the sun went down, until our throats were parched and our skin flushed pink with the excitement and exertion of it all. We could’ve forgiven the prototype for caving in under the pressure – the e-diff over-heating, the electric steering protectively reducing assistance under the abuse, the powertrain playing up. But it never did, it just kept on lapping and lapping.
If Aston Martin’s new baby feels this good when we drive it at the Portimao racetrack next month, the new Vantage will have been worth such an inordinately long wait. But only then will we know for sure.