The Vantage is definitely Aston fast. The engine produces plenty of low-down grunt, but it really impresses when extended. There’s lots of drama on the way to the 7000rpm redline, with the Vantage pulling increasingly strongly over the last couple of thousand revs – the area in which most modern turbocharged units start to feel tight.
The marriage with the eight-speed ZF automatic gearbox, which AMG doesn’t use, is a particularly happy one as well. It's refined under gentle use but swaps cogs practically as fast as a twin-clutcher under manual control or with the powertrain in its more aggressive Sport Plus and Track modes.
The Vantage is firmer and louder than the DB11, thanks to both chunkier chassis settings – the adaptive dampers lack a Comfort mode, with Sport their base setting – and a rear subframe that's mounted directly to the body without any insulating bushes, improving rigidity at the expense of refinement. It’s certainly not crude, but there's a fair amount of road noise evident beneath the exhaust note. Still, the car tracks impressively straight and accurately at higher speeds.
Onto twistier roads and the steering starts to really impress. The Vantage’s rack and its ratio are identical to that of the DB11, but the car's shorter wheelbase increases the effective ratio, making responses feel much keener. There’s plenty of front-end bite, even in the damp conditions we drove the car in, with corners giving the electronically controlled differential a chance to prove how clever it is.
The device can produce a huge 1845lb ft of locking torque almost instantly, but, unlike a conventional limited slip differential, can also fully disengage when not required. The result is outstanding traction, with the addition of some torque vectoring to sharpen responses yet none of the low-speed understeer that sticky mechanical lockers usually engender.
The engine has more than enough low-down torque to keep things interesting, especially with the stability control switched to its more permissive mode or full de-energised. But even when the Vantage is sliding, it never feels wayward or excessively lairy. Drivers are going to have a huge amount of fun in this car.
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Nice to hear the news.Car
Nice to hear the news.Car look stunning.want to ride atleast once .Thank you for the information.
The off-the-shelf someone
The off-the-shelf someone else's engine completely ruins it for me -- absolute deal-breaker. An Aston should be an Aston, and for me that means it must have an Aston engine (which IMO the 4.3/4.7 V8 is). Without an Aston engine, how good the AMG engine may be simply doesn't matter. Remember that when the AMG deal was announced it was explicitly stated that Aston and AMG would collaborate on developing a bespoke engine for Aston Martin. Turned out to be a big lie. I would've been interested in this (though they've ruined the grille), but I'll be keeping my "old" V8 Vantage.
Agree totally!
I've had several 911s and the previous (current?!) Vantage and would love one of these but it's just too much money. Unless it depreciates savagely in the first year I've no chance - plus I'd want a manual and finding one on the used market in a couple of years time would probably be near impossible anyway. Looks like I could be heading TVR's way again ...