► The new Vantage in the spotlight
► 656bhp and 590ft lbs
► But is it a missed opportunity?
The new Aston Martin Vantage has arrived, and although it’s Gaydon’s entry-level sports car, the key stats are anything but accessible; its front-mounted twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 puts out 656bhp and 590ft lbs of torque. As a result, 0-62mph is down to 3.4 seconds and top speed is said to be 202mph.
But is that actually enough in the increasingly agile and powerful sports car sector? Here’s what CAR’s deputy editor Piers Ward, and head of video for CAR James Dennison had to say:
The debate
PW: ‘Looks great, no doubt about that. But I can’t help but think they could have been a bit braver with the Vantage. They had an established platform to work from, so why not push it a bit further?’
JD: ‘Remember, this is the entry-level Vantage. The last one debuted in 2018 with 503bhp and then went all the way up to nearly 700bhp with the V12 version. I’m not saying they’ll do that again, but from my discussions with Aston Martin’s engineers they hinted at there being plenty of headroom in this latest model.’
PW: ‘Even so, by not having hybrid tech, you’d have thought Aston would have gone all out to bring down the weight and hammer the point home versus electrified rivals. Feels like a missed opportunity…’
JD: ‘Harsh! But also, not untrue. If there was one area of disappointment it would be the weight. It’s almost like Aston is leaning on the big, brutish muscle car image as an excuse for why it’s on the porkier side.
‘And that was fine, but now we’re hearing Porsche will be adding a hybrid element to the 911 and it’ll probably still come out lighter than the Vantage…’
PW: ‘Exactly. But what about Ferrari? Stroll’s not been coy about wanting to make Aston Martin the Maranello of the Midlands…’
JD: ‘The current structure’s not a million miles from Ferrari – and that seems to be working out for the Italians. This’ll be its Ferrari Roma rival, DB12 is the autoroute-crushing V12 GT, Valhalla takes on the likes of the SF90 and whatever replaces it, and the Aston Martin DBX is already going toe-to-toe with Purosangue. The only thing Aston’s missing is something to counter Ferrari’s 296 GTB after it killed off the Vanquish project last year.’
Have your say
What do you think? Sound off in the comments below or email us on car@carmagazine.co.uk for a change to be included in our Letters page.