 The $268,100 Aston-Martin Vantage S coupe is a more performance-focused piece than the Vantage. It’s been designed to go toe to toe with harder-edged versions of the Porsche 911, and now that the 911 has gone a bit...well...soft, the Aston has distinctive, raw appeal The Roadster is $294,900. |
The 321 kW 4.7-litre V8 lets
out a yelp of pleasure as you fire il up. The seven-speed single- clutch
robobox is Italian, which doesn't bode well.
It's located at the rear,
where a short diff helps slice a few tenths off the standard model's 0-100
number; now 4.5 seconds, it's still a few tenths slower than the 911 Carrera S
with PDK.
Still, the 4.7 pulls from
nothing and climbs into truly epic performance from 3000rpm where, in Sport
mode, the note rises from a purr to a full-on muscle-car-style roar, Delicious.
Across the midrange you can
feel its 490Nm of torque trying to escape by finding a weak link in the
transaxle and breaking it, but the Vantage stays tidy and sticks to the bitumen
because the traction control is perfectly calibrated.
Around town, though, the
transaxle’s bits bang
and crash into each other and the clutch can overheat in stop/start traffic,
especially if you're stuck on a hill.
At one stage, in feral Sydney
afternoon gridlock, I thought the transmission was going to quit and go into
self-protection l-won’t- work-until-l-cool-down
mode, so I stopped the car for five minutes to let it recover.
Take-no-prisoners, non-
adjustable suspension; quicker
steering; 20 pistons worth of
brakes and wider 19s at both ends also give the S plenty of extra bang for the
extra $24.728 they’re asking
over the base Vantage.
But it’s a small coupe with a beast of a V8
up front, so it should handle and steer like something that’s not particularly well balanced, Right?
Surprisingly, no. Most of the
V8's mass sits behind the front axle and the Aston's alt-up weight is a
reasonable 1610kg, so when you line up a set of tight corners it glides through
them with exceptional finesse, control and balance.
Some of this is due to the
fact that there are several alloy braces bolted to the body, but they do the trick
because the Vantage feels incredibly solid.
It steers beautifully and you
feel completely connected and in control because the feedback you get from the
car is coming through at a million megabits per second.
The ride’s pretty rugged, but the Aston makes
you feel so good in every other respect that you can forgive the occasional collapsed
vertebra.
Every time you slide into the
Aston's perfectly formed, single- piece carbon fibre/Kevlar driver’s seat (It’s
an option. Take it.) is an event, because everything you see, every surface you
touch and every mechanism you operate has been designed to make you feel special.
Even the sunvisors feel like
they cost $100,000 each. The doors open slightly upward and are perfectly
counterbalanced, so no effort is required.
At night, the instruments glow
with wondrous retro grey lighting, like an old photograph.
0K, so the tacho needte goes
anti-clockwise and the optional pop-up navigation screen is a jarring intrusion
on an otherwise ftawless scene, but otherwise you could just sit in this car
forever and be very happy.
THINGSWE
LIKE
✓
It's so, so beautiful
✓
Ail muscle V8
performance
✓
Agile, communicative
dynamics
✓
This is vvhal a sports car cabin should feel like
✓
That driver's seat
THINGS
YOU MIGHT NOT LIKE
X Gearbox is pretty agricultural and doesn't like
traffic
X Hard ride
X Pop-up navigation screen looks silly
X The lighter 911 is still a better- handling coupe
•
Made in England
•
4.'/-litre V8 petrol/seven-speed automated
manual/rear-vvheel drive
•
321 kW of power at 7300rpm/490Nm of torque at 5000rpm
•
0-100km/h in 4.5 seconds (claimed)
•
9.3L/100km highway; 19.2L/100km city; 98 octane
premium; C02 emissions are 299gkm
•
Warranty: Three
years/unlimited kilométrés
•
Standard: Four airbags. stability control, leather,
19-inch alloy wheels.
Bluetooth, six-stack CD player. USB port, rear parking sensors. alarm.
tyre-pressure monitoring
•
Redbook future values: 3yr: 55%; 5yr: 43%
