Next year will see a brave new direction for Aston Martin's dedicated sportscar, as it leaves the bow tie in the DB11 and goes for a much more youthful and aggressive look. The 2018 Vantage will also boast considerable upgrades to performance, chassis dynamics and aerodynamics.
Aston Martin's Vantage sportscar has been motoring along nicely since it debuted in 2005, slowly evolving with the addition of a new engine or transmission every now and then. But the whole Aston Martin range has been accused of feeling a little samey, with a keen eye required to pick the old Vantage from a DB9 GT, or even the Vanquish, really. It was a hell of a look, but perhaps only reached out in one direction.
The same cannot be said of the new model. The 2018 Vantage is younger, sportier, sharper and more aggressive. And it's launching in a Radioactive Lime color the previous model wouldn't have been caught dead in.
This is not an Aston to be driven in a tuxedo – I don't think you'd even wear a tie. This one's got class, but it's new money class. Open white shirt class. Take me out and drive me hard class. And for every dollop of class, there's two of breathless boy racer. It's going to ruffle some feathers about what it really means to wear that winged badge, and that seems to kind of be the point.
Engine, Powertrain and Performance
The new Vantage rocks a four-liter AMG twin-turbo V8 that belts out a very healthy 510 ps (503 hp/375 kW) and 685 Nm (505 lb-ft) of torque. It debuts with an eight-speed, close ratio ZF paddle-shift auto, but 12 months down the track there'll be a manual as well for the pure of heart. AMG squeezes more than 570 horses out of the same engine in its GT R, so there's an easy opportunity for a party model down the track.
The 0-60 mph (96.5 km/h) sprint will be dispatched in a brisk 3.5 seconds, on the way to a top speed of 195 mph (314 km/h). The dry weight is 1,530 kg (3,373 lb), or probably somewhere in the ballpark of the AMG GTS coupe once it's got fluids in.
Electronics
There's plenty here. Dynamic stability control and dynamic torque vectoring help keep things in line when you're pushing on. Adaptive damping, using "Skyhook" technology, finds a balance between comfort, grip and stability to suit how you're driving the thing, and an electronic rear differential can go from fully locked to fully open in a matter of milliseconds to "take very fine control of the car's behaviour" and deliver confidence and agility as you move toward the car's limits.
There are driving modes, but nothing as soft and foofy as "road" mode, because this ain't no grand tourer. Nope, it's Sport, Sport Plus, and Track for the new Vantage, each mode ramping up the firmness of the suspension and the responsiveness of the throttle mapping, the way the torque vectoring and e-differential kick in, the permissiveness of the traction control and the weight of the steering. Crucially, the car also gets noisier as you go up the modes, although it's not clear how the engineers have achieved this.
There's ABS braking, with electronic brake force distribution to keep things in line under hard stopping, as well as emergency brake assist to hit the pedal for you if you get dozey at the wheel.
Aerodynamics
Aeros take a big step forward on the new Vantage, with a proper splitter and diffusers underneath to help reduce drag and generate downforce. Side gills suck pressure out from behind the front wheels, and there's a hint of a ducktail spoiler at the back to further nudge downforce figures up and enhance rear grip for high speed cornering.
There will be a wailing and gnashing of teeth from certain sections of the peanut gallery when it comes to the front grill, which breaks from tradition and extends all the way down to the splitter, giving the car a kind of angry, suspicious looking face when combined with the headlights. It's a nod to (or perhaps a developmental overlap with) the custom DB10 that Aston Martin put together for the most recent Bond flick, 2015's Spectre.
Interior
The two-seat interior can be specified to suit your preferred balance of youthful, snazzy sportiness and grown-up, understated muscle. Mark me down as a fan of the high-testosterone yellow highlights, but things can certainly be toned down a long way from there.
Beyond that, it's all very nice; leather and Alcantara trim, sports seats, dual zone climate control, and an 8-inch screen for navigation and entertainment that appears to eschew touchscreen navigation for a touchpad down in the center console.
The whole thing is configurable with a raft of different options, from the functional (sports plus seats, steering wheel upgrades) to pure bling (embroidered headrests, plaques on the tread plates, colourful seat belts and an "interior jewellery" package that presumably jazzes up the dash).
So there you have it. A brave new design for Aston Martin, leaving the bow tie behind in the DB11 and striking out into pure sportscar territory. It's a fairly radical departure from the old Vantage (the highest selling Aston Martin ever at some 25,000 units) – although you can certainly make it look a lot more adult-friendly with the silver/gray paint job.
Base retail pricing will be £120,900 in the UK, €154,000 in Germany and $149,995 in the US, and deliveries will begin in Q2 next year.
Enjoy the launch video below, which features repeated shots of predatory animals to emphasize sportiness, nose rings to emphasize impetuous, youthful non-conformity, and snarly sex play in which a girl appears to bite off her partner's fingers because he didn't let her overtake him on the racetrack. We've all been there. Gripping stuff.
Source: Aston Martin