ASTON MARTIN VANTAGE
At last, it’s the moment of truth for Aston’s most important new model in years. So, do the 503bhp twin-turbo AMG V8 and new chassis make it fit to take the fight to its rivals?
I’M SITTING IN A SMALL TOWN IN southern Portugal, slightly stunned. I haven’t caught my head on the low-hanging branch of a lemon tree and there hasn’t been an accidental tasering. There hasn’t been an intentional tasering either for that matter. No, the reason for the slight befuddlement is that I’ve just driven the new Vantage in anger for the first time. And it is seriously, unexpectedly fast.
The shock is undoubtedly compounded by the fact that I was mistakenly approaching this new Vantage as a direct successor. Really, though, there is a model missing between this latest iteration and the last one. The previous Vantage had been tweaked and tuned and had its life artificially extended like a much loved teddy bear. It was still a wonderful car at the end, beguiling and engaging in an analogue, old-school way. And those timeless looks belied its underpinnings. That it was not terribly fast was also a large part of its appeal. You had longer to enjoy the journey through the revs and it would slide at more manageable speeds. But there was no pretending that it was a straight-line or lateral match for its competitors, which had all moved on.
So, while I was expecting the next chapter in the Vantage story, Aston has decided to skip some pages and catch up. Where I had expected a bit more grip and a bit more pace, I’ve been presented, no, assaulted with a whole heap more. I had thought new Vantage
might still be lagging a little bit behind the competition, like an F1 team on the bottom half of the grid that develops as fast as it can but is always a few steps behind the teams at the front. But this feels right up there with the vanguard of current super sports cars. Perhaps a Mercedes engine transplant works for road cars as well as it does for F1 cars…
To recap, the new Vantage has the twinturbo 4-litre V8 that has been doing raucous service in various AMGS since 2014. It has of course been tweaked by Aston Martin to give it a slightly different character (of which more in a bit), and in the Vantage it puts out 503bhp and 505lb ft of torque. The chassis is still of extruded and bonded aluminium construction but, unlike the DB11, the rear subframe is now attached rigidly to the chassis (without any rubber in between), which is not quite so good for NVH but better for handling precision.
Suspension is still by double wishbones at the front, but the old Vantage’s rear double wishbones have been replaced by a multi-link set-up. The latest Skyhook adaptive dampers have three settings, like on the DB11, but forego Comfort and instead have Sport as the bottom rung on the damping stepladder before going up through Sport Plus to Track.
For what it’s worth, I think the exterior of the new Vantage looks fantastic. Compact, purposeful and refreshingly unfussy. The interior that’s revealed by the slight upward
sweep of the swan doors is not quite so successful, with too many buttons and too much plastic in the centre console. However, I can forgive the slightly cluttered appearance for the fact that the main touchpoints are all spot on. The seat is nicely low, the wheel has plenty of adjustment for reach, the large metal paddles are pleasingly tactile and there is even a thoughtfully placed pad on the transmission tunnel to brace your knee against.
The view from the driver’s seat is familiar Vantage, with its relatively high dash and therefore no bonnet in sight. Yet despite this the car feels instantly easy to drive. Unlike the long-snouted AMG GT, you feel as if you sit much more in the middle of the car than towards its rear, and although it feels wide, the 50:50 weight distribution means that it’s a very natural car to get to know. The steering is precise without feeling too quick, although it is now electrically assisted and you really do miss the lovely granular feedback of the old car.
Leaving the town behind, the Vantage can begin to bare its teeth. And my, what teeth they are. The ‘hot-v’ AMG engine was already one of my favourites, but I swear it feels even better in the Aston. The throttle response is just incredible. You simply wouldn’t know this V8 was turbocharged from the way it reacts to your right foot. Every request for acceleration is met absolutely instantly with a wallop of torque. And sound. Listen hard and you can detect some similarities with an AMG, but predominantly it pours pure Aston down your auditory canals. It’s an aggressive, bass-heavy soundtrack with more than a hint of America in its accent, just like Aston’s old 4.7 naturally aspirated V8, in fact. Our test car has the standard twin-pipe exhaust and I can’t hear any need for the optional quad-tipped variant. Switch the engine map to Sport and full-bore upshifts from the eight-speed ZF auto are accompanied by the sort of small but forceful explosion that makes you wonder if a silencer has been ripped clean off its mountings.
Add to this alacrity of acceleration prodigious grip in the corners and you very quickly find yourself travelling at serious pace. I had thought that with so much torque being sent to the rear wheels the Vantage could be something of an unruly hooligan, but troubling traction on the road (at least in the dry) just
‘You simply wouldn’t know the V8 was turbocharged from the way it reacts to your right foot’
doesn’t seem like a possibility. The speed with which you can get the nose into corners and then get back on the throttle to accelerate through is astonishing, the sensation of a short wheelbase meaning it’s easy to work both ends of the car in quick succession.
The price for this precision, pace and poise does seem to be that you sacrifice some tactility. The Vantage is not aloof or uninteresting, far from it, but because it’s so damn hard to get near its limits on the road you don’t get a lot of feedback, and the steering could perhaps do with a touch more weight to mirror the grip on offer. Perhaps the smooth Portuguese roads are partly to blame and the UK’S own unique brand of bumps, camber and ‘character’ will unlock a bit more interactivity. And as for those limits, well, luckily Aston has hired a circuit on which we can potentially breach them…
The cars waiting for us the next day are in the lightest spec possible, with forged wheels (but the same P Zero rubber) and carbon brakes. This adds up to a dry weight of 1530kg, which is 219kg heavier than a Mclaren 540C but comparable with an R8, AMG GT or 911 Turbo (all cars with which the Aston must surely compete). The rate of response to inputs means that the Vantage certainly doesn’t feel heavy out on track.
Sometimes on a circuit as imposing as Portimão, with its big elevation changes and significant track width, road cars can fall apart a little or at least feel slightly less impressive in their abilities, but the Vantage feels right at home. Heading into one of the big, 180-degree corners for the first time, the brake feel – something Aston has always excelled at – is wonderfully reassuring. I decide to have my first exploratory lean on the sidewalls and turn in with what seems like enough speed. The nose simply darts towards the inside kerb without a hint of slip. I pick up the throttle more aggressively on the exit to see if the rear is any more willing to break traction, but grip is once again resolute. This is almost worrying. The trouble is that when a car has a lot of lateral grip, the stakes are commensurately higher when it does eventually unstick. Any surprises in the handling balance will have to be assessed and dealt with at higher speed. What if it’s edgy rather than progressive when it starts sliding?
‘The Vantage is fundamentally so well balanced that you quickly feel right at home’
With all this in mind, I circle round for another go at my chosen corner. More speed, more commitment, more throttle, and there it goes. But there is no elastic snap into oversteer. No cliff edge that the grip disappears off. No need to instantly back out of the throttle. Yes, the grip reduces, but it’s still very much there, the rear wheels usefully connected to the asphalt even while spinning, so that you can judge what’s going on. With plenty of steering lock for your hands to play with and lots of torque on offer under your right foot, you can then simply enjoy the slide, extending or reining it in at will. What’s more, the Aston is fundamentally so well balanced that you quickly feel right at home.
This balance is even more evident when the big dark clouds overhead come good on their threats and dump a load of rain on the circuit a few minutes later. With slides now very easy to initiate, the Vantage’s faithfulness over the limit becomes crucial. The new electronically controlled differential is a first for Aston and is also particularly impressive in the wet. It takes a couple of goes to get used to in the dry (particularly when unwinding the lock at the end of slides) as the sense of faithful connection isn’t quite what you’d get with a traditional LSD, but a bit more aggression seems to be the easy answer. When the tarmac is slippery, however, it is wonderful to feel how easily you can hold small or big angles of slip, maintaining a constant amount of wheelspin and, crucially, still accelerating.
I spend the rest of the day playing in the rain with the new Vantage, which does nothing to diminish my opinion that this is a big step forward for the baby of the Aston range. In the same way that Bobby Jones said of Jack Nicklaus ‘he plays a game with which I am not familiar’, so the old generation of Vantage, even a GT8 or V12, simply wouldn’t see which way this new one went. Of course, the price has taken something of a leap too, and at £120,900 it is battling some serious competition. But initial impressions suggest it can square up to those rivals with confidence.