NEW Aston Martin Vantage Review | Is old-school the way forward?

It's 2024, Aston is launching an all-new sports car and it doesn't have any hybrid bits. Excellent! Now we're here at Circuit Monteblanco, we are driving the new Aston Vantage. It gets a huge uplift for this generation in power, 656bhp, it's built, it's been sharpened to drive, perhaps more important for some people. It is also blessed with a new interior and infotainment system, they were the two big weak points of the last car to be honest. £165,000, that's 911 turbo money. It is billed as the sharpest, fastest Aston Vantage in history but what you do not get is the merest whiff of electrification. Given the clamour for various last of the line specials, I think Aston might just be onto something there. So before I dig into these hot laps and before I tell you what this car is like on the road, which is the really important bit, let's just pull over and break down what is going on here. So fundamentally this is a Vantage, it's a very very pretty car but that disguises the fact really that only the roof and the doors carry over. So the whole design, everything else is different, more muscle tone, it's pumped up a bit so 30mm wider on the track. LED matrix headlights here are standard now, wider grille as well so more powerful car, needs more cooling and 21 inch alloy wheels, forged alloy wheels so yeah fundamentally very familiar, very pretty car but actually very very different from what it was before. So in terms of the chassis we've got these new Michelin Pilot Sport 5S tyres and this car we're driving is on the optional carbon ceramic brakes so they save 27kg of unsprung mass and crucially all the cars get Bilstein DTX dampers, they're said to give a 500% increase in bandwidth. Despite this car being pretty old school in many ways, it has got quite a lot of tech working behind the scenes to knit everything together including a chassis dynamics controller, a bit like the Ferrari system, works on six axes, heave, yaw, all that sort of stuff that's going on and also we've got an adjustable traction control system working away in the background too. The biggest change of all actually relates to the engine, so we've still got the 4.0L twin turbo V8 from AMG but a lot of things are different here, we've got a new block, heads, cams, even the turbos are different and all that helps push up performance from 527bhp in the old F1 edition and 505lb-ft of torque all the way up to 656bhp and 590lb-ft of torque. So it does weigh 1605kg dry so it's pretty chunky, 35kg heavier than the old F1 edition but obviously all that power gives it a huge edge on the power to weight, still got a ZF transaxle at the back so eight speed, the ratios are exactly the same but we have a shorter final drive ratio so 7% shorter so you chew through those ratios even faster but it still has a 202mph top speed and that's two miles an hour more than the previous V12 Vantage. So the thing that needed most attention on the previous Vantage was the interior and the infotainment and thankfully that's all been heavily updated here so we've got this new switch layout, much more logical, looks smart with the capacitive sort of interface, it is not perfect, I've been triggering the heated seats a lot when I've been adjusting the fan speed but much much better, big improvement, we've also got this new infotainment system so two 10.25-inch screens, much smarter, easier to use, they are not perfect but they are a big big step forward so that's the car then, let's go out on the track and see how this thing drives. First thing we've got is this noise, absolutely glorious noise, got the exhaust, the loud exhaust on, sounds fantastic, really really emotive V8 soundtrack, awesome response in this engine as well. What a noise, said if you can feel the shifts are really quick, they're not super super snappy, they're quick enough but very very effective, suits the Vantage quite well I think but yet that extra power from this engine is very very obvious, we've got a shorter final drive as well so not only do we have more power, that helps us kind of chew through those ratios and it is a rapid car. Now I'm in track mode now, I've actually turned all the traction control off, I've been experimenting around so do need to kind of nurse this car a little bit. So first thing, this engine, all this extra power, sounds fantastic, the throttle response on it is really really nice as well, we've got 2,900 before it really starts to get lit but very flexible, eager, energetic engine that's just always ready to go. Now is a heavier car, 1,605 kilos dry, I think just going around the circuit now you can feel that in a way that, I have driven it on the road and we'll talk about that in a bit but it starts to feel a little bit more out of sorts on a circuit so steering is very very good, maybe a little bit isolated but very precise and gets it turned in really nicely, stays really consistent, the brakes really nice to modulate as well, nice strong stopping power, some very long straights or one very long straight on this circuit, strong stopping power there and a nice feel as well. Gear shifts aren't super super snappy but they can sort of delay a little bit in terms of before they give you the gear on the downshift but they do the job, they're not obviously like a PDK something like that but most of the time it is kind of giving me the gear I want when I want it. Loud pop when you do those gear shifts, we're in track mode now so it's pretty full on, they're not quite as quick as that suggests I think but say they do come in when you want apart from on the odd downshift. There is some kind of push on this car so there's a V8 out the front, it's 50-50 weight distribution, there is some push into corners as you'd expect of a car like this on track that you've got to manage. At the back when I'm going through some fast corners there's some kind of chop on the back that I just need to upshift and sort of watch that really. Now one of the things that's slightly confusing about this car is that the drive modes are also, the interface is also the drive mode controller so now I've got to come out of traction control, I'm going to knock it back to sport plus just to soften off that rear end that's bouncing around a bit for me and then I've got to go back into traction control, hold it down, wait for a second and now I'm in the variable mode, it's all off so let's just dial a bit more in, say eight and let's see how we get on with that. Turned in on this front end here, got a bit of a bung, still catching it a bit there I think, I'll just try it again on this corner, it's with eight so it feels like it's all off to me to be fair so let's go back a little bit, a little bit more support from this system, seven so that's, we've still got two to go, I think it's up to nine is completely off so that is seven, let's just drive a slightly faster lap here, get that front end turned in, it's just biting a little bit there I feel it, very long fast left here, just got to calm it down by upshifting, you can feel the chassis at the back just, it's sort of struggling a little bit to contain itself I think on track, just got to make sure you blow it into the corner rather than just launch it in there otherwise it will understeer, so if you can just kind of rotate it in and then use the power to give you some rear bias, that is the kind of trick here to not, I think overall you do feel the weight and it is a softer feeling car I think, there's definitely room for that track variant, fourth gear through there, so that was with that support from the traction control so really nice actually, wouldn't let me have it, it is intervening a bit, let's go up again, overall it's a really, really enjoyable car to drive, a lot of fun, very extrovert, on the track you do feel the weight, you do feel that you've got to manage that understeer which, so you can be sort of intelligent and drive around it but it's very much there and if you're clumsy you can just feel it starting to, but if you are patient you get it turned in and then you use that power to drive it out then it starts to sort of click and you just need to, just need to manage that more but certainly on the track feels a little bit of a fish out of water, I'm very interested to see what it's going to feel like on the road, so we're out on the road now in the Vantage and yeah really interesting after the track and it does feel, I think you know it's not quite there for the track as you'd expect, it's the base Vantage, it's job really is to do a really good job on the road and the great news is it does, I've really enjoyed driving this car on the road, it's also good at all speeds as well so if you're just planning on sort of using this in London or trickling around town most of the time, actually it's very, very satisfying then, it's compliant, it's got good ride quality, steering's got very good on centre definition, it is a little bit isolated I would say, I'd like a lot more feel but in terms of how precise and easy it is to sort of manoeuvre, it's very, very good, I like the seats, the gear changes just kind of glide, it's a very fluid car, the brake pedal's nicely, you know it's easy to modulate so just has that kind of fluid glide to it that makes it a real pleasure to waft around town in, so where it really works for me is on a road like this, you can work it harder, the thing that I really feel about this car to start with, obviously you've got that engine, it's got all that extra power, very, very evocative soundtrack, very flexible from low down so if you just dip into it at what we're doing now, two and a half, it just picks up very quickly but you might have heard that it just came on boost properly at 2.9, that's where it really starts to sing. Gear shifts, you don't get any of the frustration that I had on track with occasionally not getting the downshift, it feels smooth for the road, it feels quick enough, not super quick but it's part of a luxury sort of grand tourer feel, I think it actually works pretty well. I was in sport before on this very smooth road for the chassis settings and there was some roll there, you could feel it was quite soft so I'm in sport plus now and for me that is when this car really kind of clicks and comes together, you get a little bit of extra steering weight, you get that roll support and combined with the stability this car has, it feels really planted and then you just sweep it into a corner like that and it's really agile, the weight feels far back in the nose, it's 50-50 weight distribution but you certainly don't feel like there's a big heavy V8 sitting over the nose. Once you've got it in and loaded up and you've got that kind of the carve through the corner where it settles really nicely, you've got the compliance, then you can just ease into the throttle and you're not in a sort of power slide kind of way but it feels very, very rear-wheel drive, it really points you out of the corner and feels very, very rear-wheel drive so a very satisfying combination of attributes as the engineers would say. I just love that soundtrack, it's just very rich sounding, very sophisticated but it's got a load of attitude as well, we've got the louder exhaust on as well so if I just turn that off, still pretty meaty but it just lacks that final bit of attitude so I'll put that back on. Oh there's three modes, I didn't realise that, I think there's three modes so that's the oh that's full, full attitude there, listen to that, oh that is pretty fruity and some pops, some pops now. This is a very, very good car to drive, I think on the circuit it doesn't quite work, it's a bit soft, it's heavy, it's a lot of fun but it's a little bit awkward as well, it's a bit of a fish out of water whereas I think here, use it here, use it in town, use it on a great road like this, this is where it really clicks, it's a really, really good car, it is an improvement over the outgoing one so very, very special car indeed I would say.