Aston Martin Vantage Coupe (2024 - ) review

There’s a twin-turbo V8 petrol engine under the bonnet that drinks fuel and makes this a very powerful car, so your wallet won’t appreciate the petrol stops or the annual insurance premium. It’s also a hike in price over the previous model, at £165,000. Add on carbon-ceramic brakes, some carbon-fibre stuff, and the obligatory upgrade to the amazing Bowers &WIlkins audio system, and you’ll be touching the cost of a Ferrari Roma. But what price majesty? There’s still more than a whiff of Bond and all the understated British luxury that implies having this badge on your car.

Normally low-volume, high-performance cars don’t score very well for reliability, but the Vantage has long shared much of its underpinnings with Mercedes-AMG, so it’s tried and tested many times over. Owners of the previous Vantage report few problems overall. You get a three-year unlimited-mileage warranty.

Unsurprisingly, most of Aston’s safety features are engineering ones to stop the car getting away from you, rather than lots of software-focused collision warning systems and lane-departure mitigations ones. So you get a sophisticated electronic stability programme with more predictive interruptions to control the car through corners, improve stopping distances and control the wheel slip to give you the most traction when exiting a corner. Alongside these, you also get lane assist and park-distance control, and adaptive cruise control, which controls the braking as well as acceleration. But really, don’t be lulled by the fact that this is Aston’s entry-level car in terms of price: this is a car for experienced drivers who know how to maintain control - two experienced journalists overcooked it at the launch on the track and ended up in the gravel.

The Vantage feels like, and is, a very wide car. While that’s not great for drivers (see Performance below), it is great for passenger comfort, and gives the sense that this is more of a grand tourer than a sports car, designed for long-distance driving. There’s a decent amount of boot space to enhance that character, too. The ride is firm, but little of it is transmitted inside the car, leaving a calm, relatively quiet space in which to relax (unless you feel like planting the throttle and pressing the button with the two exhausts on it for extra noise). Thumbs up to Aston for calming down its previously riotous interior design, using fewer materials and cleaner lines and a more peaceful vibe, although the dashboard is still cluttered with buttons to push and twirl. The leather is from Bridge of Weir, which has an excellent sustainability record. There are a couple of small cupholders and a central armrest and small storage area, plus door pockets, and that’s about it; the car could do with some more imaginative storage areas.

Thank goodness for the new infotainment system to replace the old one, which was next to useless. But it’s a shame it sits quite low in the car, forcing your eyes down to follow Apple CarPlay’s navigation system; only the car’s own satnav displays behind the steering wheel. You should pay more for the Bowers & Wilkins 15-speaker audio system: it really is that good. Apart from that, this is a sports car not an SUV, so it’s light on whizz-bang features, and probably all the better for that simplicity.

The performance is astonishing - 656 horsepower and 0-60mph in 3.4 seconds - but the car feels very wide and difficult to place with confidence on the road, which means the chances of you exploiting that power with ease anywhere other than a track are minimal. This is not a car that’s light on its feet. On the other hand, the chassis has been re-engineered for a great crispness, the steering is magnificent and the way the car delivers the power is astonishing: it provides a real old-school, visceral thrill, with the noise to match. It probably says it all that the standard driving mode for the new Vantage is “Sport”, followed by “Sport +” and then the everything-off option. Aston’s rather grating tagline for the car is “real drivers”, which feels a bit like testosterone overload, but there is something madly rewarding about driving it.