The 2025 Aston Martin Vantage: Achingly beautiful and thrilling to drive do sex sex to

safety car vibes The 2025 Aston Martin Vantage: Achingly beautiful and thrilling to drive It took time to get confident with the Vantage, and it did not like rain. Jonathan M. Gitlin – May 1, 2025 2:33 pm | 33 With a 150 hp increase, this is the most powerful Aston Martin Vantage ever. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin With a 150 hp increase, this is the most powerful Aston Martin Vantage ever. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Minimize to nav I'm not sure I can remember another car that took as long to get comfortable with as the 2025 Aston Martin Vantage. It's an achingly beautiful machine, from the outside at least. And by the week's end, I had my first glimpses into how it can deliver driver engagement with the best of them. By then I'd also gotten over my disappointment with the interior and, sadly yet again, had the "British cars with crap electronics" stereotype confirmed once more. Painted the same striking shade of Podium Green as one of Formula 1's safety cars, the Vantage is one of the most eye-catching cars we've tested in a while. In person, that giant front grille dominates things, but all around the car you see the influence of the aerodynamicists and engineers who want to bend the airflow to their needs; cutting drag here, adding downforce there, feeding a cooling duct or venting waste heat. The way the wheel arches stretch out from the doors reminds me of the One-77 supercar from a few years ago, but it's all a thoroughly modern shape here. That sculpted and vented hood contains the Vantage's 4.0 L twin-turbo V8. With 656 hp (490 kW) and 590 lb-ft (800 Nm), it's the most powerful Vantage to date, eclipsing the time the company bolted some Eaton superchargers to a 2-ton Chesterfield sofa on wheels. ZF's excellent 8HP automatic transmission sends that power and torque to the rear wheels, which arrived wearing Vantage-specific versions of Michelin's latest Pilot Sport 5 tires. Our test car had $60,000 of options. Jonathan Gitlin Our test car had $60,000 of options. Jonathan Gitlin You sit almost on the rear axle, and it gives you a good connection to the car. Jonathan Gitlin You sit almost on the rear axle, and it gives you a good connection to the car. Jonathan Gitlin Vents and ducts ahoy. Jonathan Gitlin Vents and ducts ahoy. Jonathan Gitlin You sit almost on the rear axle, and it gives you a good connection to the car. Jonathan Gitlin Vents and ducts ahoy. Jonathan Gitlin Aston Martin's bonded aluminum spaceframe platform gives the Vantage an extremely stiff chassis, and the car's vehicle dynamics controller takes inputs from accelerometers and sensors in the powertrain, brakes, and the electronic differential to flatter the driver's abilities. Whoa, calm down! At first, that translated as an almost-nervous feeling. The variable ratio steering is very direct and in Sport mode (the default) has quite a lot of assistance, but the 21-inch front wheels are prone to tram lining on heavily used roads, and you also have to remember to turn off the lane keeping assistance each time you start the car or it will attempt to intervene in corners. Visibility is good, and it's an easy car to drive slowly, but as you increase the speed, it's as if the car begins to sit up on its contact patches and move around. Just a little, and I'm not talking anywhere near the tires' limit of adhesion, but enough to remind you that you're at the wheel of something light, powerful, and responsive. It's a rare trick to pull off at sensible speeds, and one that only really Ferrari has mastered until now, at least in my experience. I just wish it hadn't taken me a week to relax enough to trust the Vantage and start enjoying it. A track session would probably have gotten me there much faster, as it did our correspondent Alex Goy when he first drove the Vantage last year. I only took bad photos of the interior so here's one from Aston Martin. Aston Martin I only took bad photos of the interior so here's one from Aston Martin. Aston Martin CarPlay. Jonathan Gitlin CarPlay. Jonathan Gitlin The rear-view camera looks OK. Jonathan Gitlin The rear-view camera looks OK. Jonathan Gitlin CarPlay. Jonathan Gitlin The rear-view camera looks OK. Jonathan Gitlin Aston Martin has come a long way since the days of wood-trimmed interiors. Even further from the days when you'd find exposed screws holding those bits of walnut in place. The interior got a comprehensive redesign last year, including a new 10.25-inch infotainment system that was developed in-house to replace the old Mercedes-sourced system. But seated inside the car, the interior lacks much of the exterior's drama, and that's a real shame. But it's made up for by the bits of the exterior that you can still see—the pod-like side view mirrors out on their stalks are a visual delight. The new infotainment human-machine interface was a little confusing at first; pairing my phone took about 10 minutes but worked out in the end, and wireless Apple CarPlay behaved itself throughout the week. When starting the car there was sometimes a lengthy wait for the infotainment to boot up, as if the hardware wasn't quite powerful enough for the software stack on top. Don’t get it wet? Those are very minor complaints compared to what happened when it rained really hard, though. I had been planning to drive the Vantage to dinner, but upon getting in the car and turning it on, I realized it had other ideas. A number of yellow glyphs remained brightly illuminated on the digital main display—including traction control. A series of notifications informed me of what else wasn't working, including the ability to switch the car into Wet mode. Inclement weather. Jonathan Gitlin Inclement weather. Jonathan Gitlin Uh-oh. Jonathan Gitlin Uh-oh. Jonathan Gitlin Ironically, PS5 tires are amazing in the wet. But would you risk someone else's $263K car with no traction control? I didn't. Jonathan Gitlin Ironically, PS5 tires are amazing in the wet. But would you risk someone else's $263K car with no traction control? I didn't. Jonathan Gitlin Uh-oh. Jonathan Gitlin Ironically, PS5 tires are amazing in the wet. But would you risk someone else's $263K car with no traction control? I didn't. Jonathan Gitlin With the numbers "$264,300" and "656 hp" at the forefront of my mind, the DC metro sufficed for that trip. Later that evening, the air still damp but no longer raining, it was if it had all been a dream. A push of the start button and everything lit up and then went dim as normal. The infotainment even booted in an acceptable time. My guess is that there was an improperly sealed connector somewhere, and in torrential rain, water got where it shouldn't. Regardless, the car let me down when it was supposed to take me somewhere. As a former resident of the UK, it saddens me to no end that the stereotype about British cars and their electronics is as true today as ever, but the fact remains that every British car I drive, from Minis to McLarens, manages to have some kind of digital or electrical foible that should have been ironed out. Do better, Britain! With a base price of $191,000, the Vantage is competing with a number of other sports cars, but its biggest rival has to be the Porsche 911 Turbo. It's a much more dramatic car than the Porsche, in all the meanings of that word, both good and bad. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin Sure looks good though. Jonathan M. Gitlin Automotive Editor Jonathan M. Gitlin Automotive Editor Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC. 33 Comments