Aston Martin Vantage Roadster 2020 UK review

Опубликованно 28.09.2020 02:45

What is it?

Another entertaining Aston Martin arrives, then.

It was always the plan that this Vantage Roadster, a drop-roof version of Aston Martin’s most sporting car, would turn up at the same time as the DBX, its least sporting car. A spot of yin and yang, perhaps. Yes, see the SUV, but also don’t forget we still make sports cars. As if we would. The Vantage Roadster is all you’d expect a drop-topped Vantage to be, plus a little bit more, which we’ll come back to. What's it like?

If the aim was to make the roadster drive much like the coup?, I’d say Aston has managed it, albeit with a just-noticeable drop in body rigidity. The company says the Vantage is its most aggressive, predator-like model but these things are relative when you’re in the ballpark of something as brutally accelerative as a Porsche 911 Turbo, or as wild as Jaguar’s fastest F-Type, or perhaps even harbouring thoughts of a mid-engined McLaren Sports Series model.

In that company, the Aston doesn’t seem so aggressive. (Aston’s forthcoming mid-engined supercar should remedy that.) The interior gets a lot of lovely leather and the odd less lovely plastic and feels as much like a grand tourer as a sports car. I don’t know why more car makers don’t do what Aston does with the gear buttons: they’re mounted high on the dashboard, freeing up space here for a last-gen Mercedes infotainment wheel on the transmission tunnel. From your viewpoint, the bonnet dips away from you, there’s a high window line and the Aston sometimes feels a bigger car than it is.

Its dynamics, though, remain as charming and well sorted as in the coup?. Because the brawny engine is out the front, developing its 505lb ft from just 2000rpm, there’s a GT-ish demeanour to the way it feels. You’re not at the pointy end of something, but pleasingly in the middle. Should I buy one?

Everything as noted, then, perhaps bar three things. One, the hood cycle – open-close or vice versa – takes less than seven seconds (up to 31mph), which is remarkable. Two, you can consider the claimed 1628kg ‘dry, lightest options’ weight to be more like 1780kg full of fuel, given we weighed a coup? at 1720kg. And lastly, there’s a new grille.

What Aston calls its ‘vane’ grille, it is reminiscent of its classic grilles of old. It requires a new bumper, too, so it’s quite a big investment. I think I’d just become used to the initial track-inspired rowdy one, but if you like your Astons to be more traditional, well, the classic one suits the car’s predictable demeanour well enough.

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