Aston Martin’s game-raising form continues with its latest drophead sports car, the £175,000 Vantage Roadster. To have this much soul in a car from 2025 is a vanishing rarity, and the only car that can rival it in that department has a prancing horse badge and is much more expensive.
Firstly, let’s just bask in the handsomeness of the Vantage Roadster. It has that Bondian aesthetic of a well-cut English suit expertly containing muscle and rippling intent. But there is undeniable menace in its swollen mouth and insect-like eyes. It looks like you just spilt its drink.
The squat proportions and two-seat layout compliment the retractable canvas roof whether it’s up or down. It takes just 6.8 seconds to deploy, and this can be done at up to 31mph, so it’s a top worth dropping. When it’s down, its silhouette is that of a dart. When it’s up, it reminds me of a small tank with its turret, but maybe that’s just because I test drove this car through Bavaria and passed Hitler’s Berghof in Obersalzburg, so I had Allied artillery on the mind.
On its pert rear, the shape of the grille is echoed by the line of the light bar in an unmistakable Aston motif. The chunky venturi slats and four exhaust pipes indicate this is no mere riviera cruiser but a car that can achieve respectable lap times.
Aston are really beginning to push the performance envelope. They used to be little more assertive than a Bentley, weighed down by wood and leather and a royal warrant. Astons were, two generations ago, just Jaguars with a sexier skin, a higher price and inherited 007 cred. Now they truly are Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Porsche 911 Turbo S competitors, both in performance and execution.
The Vantage used to be the ‘baby Aston’, but there’s nothing infantile about 656bhp. Nevertheless, that output is, startlingly, the lowest in Aston’s model line-up, putting the brand’s promotion to the super and hyper leagues into perspective.
Under the Vantage’s skin are a lot of Mercedes AMG-derived organs, not least that power-dense 4.0 twin-turbo V8. There are big advantages to partnering with a major German OEM, but they’ve been tuned to give the car character – something that’s an endangered species right now. It sounds like an Aston should, which is to say, a Welsh tenor who has accidentally stepped into a scolding bath: AAAARGHHHH-shift-AAAARGHHHH! Pop, crackle, middle-C.
The eight-speed automatic gearbox has had its ratios trimmed for more urgent acceleration. Zero to 60mph takes less than 3.5 seconds. If you’re on a mountain pass like me, put it in manual (and Sport Plus or Track) and leave it in third – its ballistic levels of torque will deal with the rev counter’s full bandwidth.
Like its competitors, losing the roof does almost nothing measurable to affect the Roadster’s rigidity and handling (if your previous experience of volante Astons is the 90’s DB7 or 00’s DB9, you may be disbelieving, but it’s true). It does, however, add 60kg – that’s basically the weight of a wellness influencer behind your rear headrest.
Adaptive DTX dampers, as found on the 911, and an e-diff connected to the rear-mounted gearbox makes this car compliant and compelling as I charge through Germany and into the Austrian alps. The upside of increasing its width by 3cm over the old model is it’s so planted in the corners. The real-life downside, though, is it slaps cat’s eyes everywhere it goes, and I would hate to attempt the width restrictors on Chelsea’s Albert Bridge with it. That beautiful satin paintwork would be a pain to fix, especially as it costs £15k on top of the base price.
Despite the gargantuan guts on the thing, the cabin is a serene place even with the roof down, despite only having a tiny wind defector and no rear buttresses to block turbulence (admittedly I didn’t go near its 202mph redline). For a summer’s day blast, I’m not sure there’s anywhere I’d rather be. A huge part of that is the very attractive interior, which is broadly shared across the new Aston range but is a galactic improvement on those of old.
Aston should really bottle the smell of its leather hides and offer them as home diffusers. Every cigar lounge should have one. As for the UX touchscreen, developed in-house, it’s a massive improvement on the previous Mercedes system, but like most cabrios it can be tricky to read in bright sunlight.
There’s a pleasingly old-school vibe to this car, though, where you’ll want to spend as little time as possible looking at a screen – a good mantra for life – and look ahead as the road, and your dreams of crushing continents in an Aston Martin, comes towards you. As a mission partner, it’s a true double-O. Bond and Aston Martin have an enduring love affair, after all.
The Vantage Roadster almost matches the Porsche 911 Turbo S Convertible for performance, it has the style of the Ferrari Roma Spider, and the brawniness of the Mercedes-AMG GT Roadster. It really is the best parts of all these cars, and only the £210,000 Ferrari can compete when it comes to sense of occasion. In the fight to beat the Italians at their own game, Aston’s engineers deserve a medal. The Vantage Roadster is like a grounded Spitfire, and you’ll feel like a swashbuckling hero in its open cockpit.
