A new Aston Martin convertible?

Indeed, but don’t call it that, or even a Volante: this is the Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster. Those five words will set you back £91,000, £8k more than the coupe. For this you get a stunning car that’ll do 0-60mph in 4.9 seconds before powering on to 175mph. However you’ll still pay more for options like xenon lights and 19-inch wheels. Read our 10-page first drive to see how the Roadster performs on the road.

So what’s new?

Well, the roof for a start. The lines of the coupe are slightly spoiled when it’s up, but overall it is very well executed. We especially like the leather-covered double bubbles on the rear deck, giving the car a speedster look. The electric soft-top roof will neatly fold away at the touch of a button in 23 seconds (at speeds of up to 30mph, no less), but the roof in its former cousin, the Jaguar XKR, is five seconds faster…
continue reading "Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster"

It’s a sign of the times at Gaydon that Aston Martin has produced three new models since it walked away from Ford ownership in 2007. Sounds impressive until you realise that all of them are special editions more akin to the mass-marketing commonly seen at Renault or Vauxhall. Hence the V8 Vantage N400 limited edition unveiled at last year’s Frankfurt Motor Show and driven here for the first time.
Built to commemorate Aston’s entries at the Nurburgring 24-hour race, it’s a regular V8 with a brace of mechanical, styling and equipment flourishes. And an £11,000 price hike. Aston will build 240 coupes and 240 roadsters in N400 spec and a plaque on the kickplate of our orange example reads ‘001 of 480’, confirming it as the original 2007 Frankfurt Motor Show car. Better not crash it then.

Aston Martin N400: the mechanical spec

The 4.3-litre V8 benefits from an ECU upgrade and tweaks to the throttle response to liberate an extra 20 ponies, swelling power output to 400bhp, while twist rises to 310lb ft. On paper that’s enough to hit 60mph in 4.9sec while the N400 will top out at 177mph on the fastest sections of the Nordschleife. If you’re brave enough.
The only other changes to the N400 are the addition of the sport suspension pack, bringing uprated springs and Bilstein dampers, a new rear anti-roll bar and graphite-finished alloy wheels. This will be rolled out to other Vantages this summer for a premium of around £2500. Meanwhile, car spotting anoraks should look out for the N400’s revised sill design, silver mesh on the bonnet and side strake intakes, clear rear lamp lenses and a bright finish to the unmistakeable Aston grille.
continue reading "Aston Martin V8 Vantage N400"

The Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster was introduced only a year ago, but already it’s been revised, the headline stats being a V8 that’s been bored and stroked from 4.3 to 4.7-litres (new pistons, liners and crankshaft), pushing power from 380bhp to 420bhp and torque from 302lb ft to 346 lb ft. The price? It rises from £91k to £93k – Sportshift carrying an additional £3k premium.

Have they even bothered to change the way the Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster looks?

If you’ve already got a Roadster you’ll be pleased to hear that the new model is indeed identical on the outside, so to the casual observer you won’t suddenly be driving round in last season’s lines. It’s inside that the changes have occured, with a DBS-inspired centre console. And the DBS’s awkward Emotional Control Unit and theatrical push-the-key-in-the-slot start-up procedure. There are also some useful extras including iPod and MP3 integration and a 30GB hard disc drive sat-nav replaces the previous DVD-based system.
continue reading "Aston Martin 4.7-litre V8 Vantage Roadster Sportshift"

This is the new Aston Martin V12 Vantage, and it has the potential to be one of the company’s greatest cars to enter its hardly shabby history books. The recipe is simple: take your smallest and lightest chassis and shoehorn into it (to the accompaniment of some polite British swearing) your biggest and most powerful engine. In this case, the result is an additional four cylinders, 90bhp and nearly £52k to Aston’s V8 Vantage. Big numbers – in every department, including that eye-watering price.

Is the new Aston Martin V12 Vantage as hardcore as the V12 RS concept?

We’re afraid not. The bright blue V12 Vantage RS concept that Aston unveiled at the opening of its Gaydon design studio in December 2007 featured a 600bhp V12 from the company’s DBRS9 racer, with the oil tank for the dry-sumped engine filling the Vantage’s boot.

To make the V12 concept a reality, the engine is essentially the same 5.9-litre V12 you’ll find in the DBS. The plumbing is slightly different (and there are some carbon bonnet vents to extract the extra heat), but you still get 510bhp and 420lb ft, plus active valves in the exhaust that woofle on start-up, bark monstrously when you blip the throttle and cry loudly when you home in on 7000rpm.

With dry-biased Pirelli Corsa tyres, the V12 isn’t exactly soft, but sat-nav is standard and the concept’s RS tag has been dropped. Why? Because the concept was ‘thrilling but frightening,’ according to Aston CEO Dr Bez, and ‘absolutely not the car we would have produced.’

I guess the big V12 adds a few extra kilos to the Vantage?

A full 100 kilos, according to Aston. But carbon ceramic brakes are standard and cut 12.5kg over the conventional items, plus the forged alloy 19-inch alloys shave 5kg, thinner inner rear quarter panels cut yet more weight, and if you opt for the brilliantly supportive, fixed-back £1756.81 carbon Recaros then they save another 17kg. Thus equipped, your V12 Vantage will only weigh 50kg more than a V8 Vantage.

And despite having a big V12 up front, the new Vantage never feels nose heavy. There’s loads of front-end grip and decent steering, too – the V12 has the best steering of any current Aston, with a lovely linear helm.

It looks gorgeous!

That it does. To some, the V8 Vantage can look a little slight, but the V12 looks like a thug in a suit. The new N24 race car inspired sills fill out the sides, while the new carbon splitter and rear diffuser are obvious enough to signal this car’s latent strength, without being too flashy like the DBS.

It’s pretty special inside too, with Alcantara and leather everywhere. The dashboard buttons are a little fiddly, but it’s much less businesslike than in a Porsche, and feels much more inviting than a caged 911 GT2.

It’s not roomy though (despite being quite wide), the ludicrously chubby gearstick is set too far back for taller drivers, and the glovebox will only take a pair of gloves – if you own small hands. But these are faults common to many Astons, and aren’t enough to detract from the essential magnificence of the V12 Vantage.

So it’s pretty special then?

It is, especially if you press the Sport button, which gives you a much sharper throttle response and opens up those trick valves in the exhaust. It issues a banshee wail and sends you rocketing forward at the lightest brush of the throttle.

Sport mode doesn’t touch the dampers though. Unlike the DBS, the V12 has fixed-rate suspension, albeit a chassis that’s 15mm lower and 45% stiffer than in the V8. Of course it’s firm, but while the DBS can feel either too floaty or too firm, the Aston strikes a perfect balance, with the dampers taking the worst edges of any rough roads. It also feels massively resolved for a relatively low-volume special.

Beyond that, the V12 is massively quick – as you’d expect in a 510bhp coupé tipping in at 1680kg – with enough muscle to blast past anything on the roads, while the brakes are amongst the best ceramic set-ups around: full of feel and with lots of stopping power.

Verdict

One of the best Aston Martins ever sums things up pretty nicely. The V12 Vantage is brilliantly judged.

It might look exactly the same, but there’s a new 4.7-litre V8 in this Aston Martin Vantage. The suspension, steering, interior and transmission of the V8 Vantage has also been significantly revised. The revisions push the V8 Vantage’s price from £83,000 to £85,000.

This new Aston Martin V8 Vantage still looks the same to me.

If you’ve already got a Vantage you’ll be pleased to hear that the new model is indeed identical on the outside. Step inside, however, and you’ll notice that the centre console has been tweaked to look much like the DBS with its so-called Emotional Control Unit and theatrical push-the-key-in-the-slot start-up procedure.

There are also some useful extras including iPod and MP3 integration and a 30GB hard disc drive sat-nav that replaces the previous DVD-based system. The comfy leather seats remain but you’ll still notice that a little more support wouldn’t go amiss through quicker corners.

And it still sounds great, right?

Yes indeed. The bypass valve in the exhaust still opens at around 4000rpm, so it still has that head-turning, whip-crack soundtrack. Previously it sounded better than it went, but now the 4.3-litre V8 has been bored and stroked to 4.7-litres. The bore goes up from 89mm to 91mm thanks to new pistons and cylinder liners, while the stroke is upped from 86 to 91mm with an all-new crankshaft.

That translates to 420bhp and 346lb ft (up from 380bhp and 302lb ft respectively) and much more urgent progress on the road. There’s instant shove as soon as you drop the accelerator, and one long progressive rush to beyond 7000rpm.

A very unscientific test against a hard-charging E92 V8 M3 on the autobahn suggested the Aston had the legs on the BMW from 60mph until traffic intervened at around 160mph. And the M3 isn’t slow!

We’ll pay for that at the pumps, then.

Impressively both emissions and fuel consumption are down considerably. When the V8 was first developed the focus wasn’t really on C02, so now they’ve put their minds to it Aston’s engineers have been able to down-size that all important carbon footprint from 358g/km to 328g/km (360 to 312g/km Sportshift). Likewise, mpg rises from 18.8mpg to 20.4mpg (18.7mpg to 21.4mpg Sportshift).

How does it handle?

Well. The Vantage has loads of grip, it’s agile and it’s pretty benign too. Get to a twisty road and enthusiastic drivers will find the one-stage traction control a little too keen to intervene. But switch it off and the Aston feels highly exploitable and controllable when the rear end does break away.

That’ll be the chassis revisions, then. Improvements introduced with the Roadster last year have now been carried over to the Coupe. It gets new upper damper mountings and revised bump stops plus front springs stiffened by 11 percent and rears by 5 percent.

Despite claims that the Roadster would be stiffer (thanks to the extra structural stiffening required to compensate for the chopped roof), we actually found the Roadster to serve up a near perfect blend of suppleness and control where the Coupe’s ride was noticeably more jagged.

We also found apparently identical brakes on two different Coupes to have very different pedal responses, one instant and bitey, the other noticeably softer though still as effective.

And the steering?

It’s also revised, the alignment modified to improve steering feel, while the front lower suspension arm compliance bushes are stiffened by 22 percent to counter criticisms that the old car’s helm was a little vague.

Move the steering away from the dead ahead and, while it’s light, there’s instant meat giving some vital feedback. It’s progressively linear too but the initial feel fails to develop into the proper weight it promises when you commit to a bend – something that’s solved with the optional Sports Pack.

Sports Pack? I’m all ears.

For a £2495 premium you get more robust-looking forged lightweight five-spoke alloys (the same 20-inch diameter as standard with the same tyre sizes), revised Bilstein dampers, uprated springs (45 percent stiffer on the Coupe, 25 percent stiffer on the Roadster) and a revised rear anti-roll bar (Coupe only).

So equipped, the V8 Vantage corners flatter, rides a little firmer (the damper travel is tighter, meaning vertical movements are more abrupt and imperfections in the road are transmitted more clearly) without being crashy.

The suspension changes also add the extra steering weight on turn-in that the standard car promises but fails to deliver. It’s unfortunate that you can’t have the better steering with softer suspension but, on balance, the Sports Pack is an option we’d tick.

Also worth bearing in mind is that, for now, the Sports Pack is factory fit only, but a well-placed source suggests it will eventually become a retro-fit option – a good way of refreshing a second-hand car, although we can’t imagine the package being quite so cheap. Not with those wheels.

Should I choose the manual gearbox or the Sportshift automated manual?

We drove two Coupes – one with and one without the optional Sports Pack mentioned above – but both were manual. We’ll deal with the manual here, but the Sportshift is examined in detail in the Roadster review.

The manual six-speeder is improved with a revised clutch design to make it a less physically demanding drive. But it still feels old school in a TVR kind of way. The shift between gates is smooth enough, but the linkages required for a front-engined/transaxle (ie the gearbox is located at the back axle) layout means the gear engagement can feel a bit baggy. We also struggled to engage first cleanly at a couple of junctions.

Heel and toe gear changes (blipping the throttle to smooth the transition between gears while downshifting and braking), are useful for smoothing out clunky shifts. But with the Vantage featuring a wide transmission tunnel, it’s difficult to cant your right foot into the perfect position. It is possible to do, but I rarely got it right in nearly 200 miles of driving. Maybe it will be easier in right-hand drive cars with the accelerator located away from the transmission tunnel. And maybe you couldn’t care less about heeling and toeing!

If there’s a manual on offer, usually I’ll take it. But, like 80 percent of Vantage buyers, I’ll have my Vantage with Sportshift please.

Verdict

The style remains the same, but Aston has addressed some key criticisms of the original car. The big draw is the engine – upped from 4.2 to 4.7-litres – which at last delivers the performance that the looks promise. Also welcome are the chassis improvements, which strike a good balance between ride and handling without having to resort to twin- or triple-mode dampers.

All in, the V8 Vantage has been holistically improved without drawback. It has more character than a 911, more style than a BMW M6, more badge appeal than a Jaguar XK and a sportier edge than the Maserati Granturismo S.

It’s still a four star car, but this time it’s much closer to five.