2025 Aston Martin Vanquish First Test Better Than Ferrari

I'm Johnny Lieberman, a.k.a. a kid in a supercar candy store. And today we're making a video for Motor Trend about the all new third generation Aston Martin Vanquish. While there's a ton to talk about with this car, I think we can shorten the whole review to just look at it. Jaw dropper, a fist fighter, like, oh, look at this thing. Literally gorgeous. And I'm glad I'm standing right here because this is a Jaguar E-Type. Remember, this is a car that Enzo Ferrari said is the best looking car in the world. But he said that 64 years ago. And, well, things have changed. Am I going to go on record in saying that the new Vanquish is better looking than the E-Type? Maybe. I'll leave it up to you to decide. And there's a lot more to this car than just how great looking it is. Like under the hood, there's a twin turbo 5.2 liter V12. That makes 824 horsepower and 738 pound feet of torque. And we'll get to all that plus how it drives. But the reason we're here is I want to show you how far Aston Martin has come in the pursuit of a big horsepower grand touring machine. Check this out. This is the second generation Aston Martin Vanquish. And I was actually on the launch of this thing, which is over a decade ago. Tons of carbon fiber. Literally, it weighs two tons. It's got a 5.9 liter naturally aspirated V12, 565 horsepower, 457 pound feet of torque. You can see there's a huge power jump between Gen 2 and Gen 3. I went back and I read my review because it's been so long. I really enjoy driving this thing. I like it quite a bit. I do remember we dragged one along to Best Driver's Car that year. It didn't do so hot because, look, it's a big GT car, not a sports car. There was a first generation Vanquish. We don't have that here, but instead we have this. This is the Aston V550. I think technically it's called the Aston Martin Vantage SC V550, but don't worry about that. They made 239 of these things. This is one of them. Super rare. Back then, Aston didn't have a V12, but they wanted to compete with brands like Ferrari and Lamborghini who did have V12. So what do you do? You take your 5.3 liter V8, put a supercharger on it. You know what? Why do a supercharger when you can do two superchargers? Look at that. One, two. And that means this car makes 550 horsepower and 550 pound feet of torque, which back in the 90s was absolutely insane. That's when a Viper made, you know, 400 horsepower and people were going crazy, like, can cars even get more powerful? This is making 550. I've never actually driven one of these, and we're going to go ahead and change that right now. What a treat. I'm an old Aston fan from back in the day, and this is just one of those unicorn cars that you read about and you just figured you'd never see one, let alone drive one. And yet here we are. Yeah, baby. Yes, sir. Man, old school muscle car. Just mean. Very interesting with the twin superchargers, crazy induction noise. So, yeah, we mentioned, you know, 239 ever made. And that might sound like such low production numbers. But remember, you know, over the 15 years that the Countach was in production, there'd be like fifteen hundred of them. So just back then, the global appetite for cars like this, it just wasn't there, but no matter two superchargers. I mean, what what is not to love? So what is this thing? Well, after the original V8 Vantage went out of production, Aston began building the Verage, which was a carryover motor, made a little bit more power. Body looked about the same, but, you know, it was a car to smoke cigars in rather than a real sports car or grand tour. It's more of a muscle car type situation. But, you know, obviously you want to compete with Ferrari and Lamborghini and even Maserati to some degree. So two superchargers, boom, you've got the V550. What a great formula. I mean, add more power, add more leather, add more handling, add more everything. How can you argue against a car like the V550? It's just incredible. And, you know, we know it was incredible for the time. Of course, then we get to what Aston Martins are like today. And remember, what they're really trying to do is they're not trying to beat Ferrari with, like, you know, the power game. They're just trying to beat Ferrari in terms of desirability. What we're going to do now, though, is we're going to sadly exit this thing and happily get into the new 2025 Aston Martin Vanquish and we'll see how far the company has come in three decades of building huge power, front engine, grand touring machines. So let's go do that. Let's drive this thing a little bit more. Then we'll go do that. Before I jump inside, I thought I'd just take a second, point out some of the amazing design details of the Vanquish, because this, again, one of the best looking cars I've ever seen, certainly in the last 25 years. A couple of standard tricks Aston Martin employs to make it look so good. One is a huge dash to axle ratio. What is that? All right, well, here's the axle. Steering wheel is basically the dashboard. The longer you make that, the more eyes interpret it as a good looking vehicle. It goes straight back to that Jaguar E-type. Speaking of the E-type. Another trick is you want the roof to be about as high as the wheel stacked on top of itself. And I bet you they did it to the millimeter. Just textbook design 101. You can teach a course with this car. A couple other cool things. Classic Aston Martin face. Perfect. Don't change a thing. It's great. You have these cool extractors here. Hey, 12 cylinders. One, two, three, four, five, twelve holes in the hood. That's awesome. Look at this. This reverse knackerduck. What's a knackerduck? Think Toontosh, right? It's an intake on a mid-engine car that pulls air in. Well, here, this is generating so much heat. You want to get air out of it. So it does that. It looks super cool. It just kind of elongates the car, improves that dash to axle ratio. It's awesome. You get back here to these hips. I mean, voluptuous. Think Jessica Rabbit. Think Christina Hendricks and Mad Men, right? It's cartoonish and over-the-top and gorgeous. And we love it. The taillights. These are the best Aston Martin taillights since the Vulcan. They're so cool. Love them. The only thing I've heard people on the Internet critique is this body-colored panel here on the rear. I like it. You can get a contrast. You could get it in black, body-colored here. I would say this. It's different. People, you know, change always upsets people. But if you think about the DB9, the DB11, the DB12, the rear starting to look kind of the same. They did a drastic change here. And I think it looks great. And of course, for the U.S. market, these bumperettes, they come right off. Other countries don't need them. I think they look really cool, kind of like little Tetris pieces. But again, what a wild design. Last thing I'll point out is the quad tailpipe. They're at a great angle, almost this 45 degree angle, which kind of like chops down the visual mass of the rear. Aston just nails it, does it perfect. A-plus, 10 out of 10, no notes. All right, let's try it. Twist my arm. Twist it, twist it. I don't have to be a scientist to observe the fact that Aston Martin has come a long way in the last 30 years. OK, I'm in sport mode right now. I got individual GT, sport, sport plus. I'm going to actually crank it down to GT just to calm it down for a minute, because I want to talk to you about the driving experience. Long wheelbase car. It's very roomy here, especially compared to that V550. No rear seat, but a pretty good sized trunk. It's just very, very elegant when it's calmed down. And again, I'm in GT mode. I'm just cruising near the ocean. Beautiful back road, canyon somewhere in Malibu. All is right with the world. This is just fantastic. Now, this car is like, what's the metaphor? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Split-Lip, because when you get on this thing, boy, does it punch hard. So much torque, and it's just going to the rear wheels. Last car I drove that reminded me of this was the Pagani Utopia. This, this sounds better. Big carbon brakes. Stop car real good. What a monster. If you were to buy a competing Ferrari right now, it's a 12-cylinder. What more would you get? Well, it wouldn't look any better. We know that. It would be naturally aspirated. So you'd have a little bit more horsepower, but you'd have much less torque. And I mean, 738 foot-pounds just to the rear wheels is epic. It just hits. If you were to look at the numbers, we tested this thing at 0-60 like 3.3 seconds, quarter mile, 11.2 at 131 miles an hour or something like that, 23.3 seconds around the figure eight. Like, they're OK numbers. They're not like crazy numbers. You know, a Corvette C8, not even the Z06, just the base one. Probably, you know, makes the same numbers. I know it's quicker to 60. But this car ain't about those numbers. This car is about how it makes you feel. So imagine you own this, right? You wake up. Ah, you know, you go stand in the garage and you see this thing and it's just, wow, I can't believe that's mine. I can't believe I have something that beautiful. And there's very few cars in the world you can say that about. This is definitely one of them. Just a nice, big, luxury, grand tourer, right? I mean, take this dial right here and you put it into Sport or Sport Plus and it's just, it's taking the blue pill, it's drinking the serum, shooting up the roids, something happens, it is just transformed. It's such a beast of a car. Such a beast of a car. And the soundtrack from the V12. Wow. Oh, man, oh, man. Handling, again, good enough. No, it's not like, you know, a track car. You could take it to the track and have a great time. But it's just not designed to do that. How do you beat like a Porsche GT3 RS on the track? You don't. How do you beat it here? Oh, with this engine. Oh, that's so cool. Oh, that's something you can do with a Porsche. This is so much better than I thought it was going to be. They crank up the beauty and they just add more power and more sound and more drama and more character and more everything you want in a car. And, oh, it's just awesome. Now, the bad news. We're only building a thousand of them and only like three hundred thirty three are coming to the US. They start at four hundred sixty three thousand dollars and they're all sold out. So you can't buy one anyways. Other than that. Party trick where it's like the rear is not out of control, but it's just so torquey and it's twisting on this stiff body that it's moving around. Front is planted, you're in control, but it gives you a split second of feeling like, whoa. But, oh, it's just great. Wow, Aston, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you. This is it. Vanquish. Hats off to you Aston Martin, you did it, you really, really did it. What's the Ferrari going to do that this doesn't do? You tell me.