First Drive: 2018 Aston Martin Vantage

If the new Vantage looks distinctly familiar, that’s because sketches of the car were hanging on the walls of Aston’s offices the day that Spectre producers Sam Mendes and Barbara Broccoli came to talk about the DB10 for the movie. They took one look at the burgeoning Vantage and said they wanted it, so Aston duly made a special version based on it.

The true genius behind this new front-mid-engined, 4.0-litre, twin-turbocharged V8 sports car, which takes the engine from the V8 DB11, is Aston’s unassuming magician-in-chief, Matt Becker. Formerly chief engineer at Lotus, his handprints are all over the new Vantage and it’s a work of engineering art. Where the old Vantage had front and rear lift, the new Vantage has half the front lift and a shedload of rear downforce. The driver sits around the central pivot, or yaw, point of the car which now has an electronic differential that is linked to the electronic stability control system. It’s more sensitive to changes of direction and traction, so can offer far more nuanced solutions, as well as going from fully open to fully-locked in milliseconds, unlike a standard limited slip diff. 

This is also the lowest nose on any Aston, with a front splitter below that, and yet piloting it along Portuguese roads, with severe undulations, it never scraped its aero-diffused bottom lip on anything – thank the American market for that, where noses have to be high enough to miss vicious multi-storey ramps. 

It’s not just the outside of the car which has been refined: thankfully the inside is far less riotous than the DB11, with matching colours, textures and tones instead of a clash of materials and patterns. If you want to be lairy, you can always specify a lime-green front splitter and grill surround, or lime-green accents on the doors and round the automatic gear buttons that control the eight-speed ZF box (a manual will be offered in due course). You can have forged wheels or standard steel, and twin exhausts or quad pipes.

Fire that engine up and lift off the brake, and the car is already pulling against the pedal. This is in no way a poor man’s DB11; it is a different experience entirely to the GT; a raw-edged, taut sports car, "a weekend warrior”, in Andy Palmer’s words. The seating position, lowered to emulate that sporting drive, was too low for me; I’m 5ft 6in and had to strain to see over the raised electric instrument cluster with its leather surround, and steering wheel, until I’d jacked the seat right up, which had the adverse effect of putting me too high in the cabin. 

On the open roads in Portugal, where we tested the car, in Sport mode (there is also Sport Plus and Track), the exhaust note reverberates in the cabin (shame there’s no loud button to separate the exhaust note from the performance as there is in a Jaguar F-Type): you’ll love it or hate it (I found the pitch of it too booming), but it’s certainly a constant reminder you are in a powerful sports car. 

The chassis is supreme though tight corners, the nose tightening just when you think that surely the front will wash wide, and the standard steel brakes are plenty for any road driving. We took the car onto the track at the Portimao circuit for a few laps: the new carbon ceramic brakes are a worthwhile option only for track work, plus they shave 24kg off the weight, with the forged wheels taking off another 10kg. We also had a few hot laps with Becker who showed off what his engineering team have really done with this new iteration, the rear wheels scrubbing viciously at the tarmac. The acceleration is fantastic, the car sharp and alert.

There is a little shelf directly behind you for small items such as phones, and a bigger, proper parcel shelf behind that. No glove box. The boot is big enough for two sets of golf clubs side by side, we’re told, which is probably a thing of extreme importance in the Algarve in March, where Brits flock to practise their swing. Aston also claims that two 6ft 6in adults will sit in comfort inside, but none of us was able to put that to the test. 

What is certain is that in the Vantage Aston Martin has created another winner. The new model is the second of the new Aston Martin cars, or Second Century Plan, to give the business plan its proper name, after the DB11, which is a very different car – no more will Aston produce a set of Russian dolls for its range, in which one car is simply a bigger or smaller version of the previous. One can only smack one’s lips in anticipation of the DBX SUV due next year; it will have its cynics, of course, but I’d happily sign up for one now. 

The Numbers

Engine: 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8

Transmission: 8-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive

PS/Nm: 510/685

0-60mph: 3.5sec

Top speed: 195mph

Price from: £120,900