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By Jeremy Clarkson|Photography by Joe Windsor-Williams
The Aston Martin Vantage is now available with the V12 engine from the DBS. Mmmm. I bet you're yearning for all the juicy details. The mere prospect of spending a little time discovering the car is probably even causing you to salivate, as though you've just caught a whiff of lamb chops and gravy coming from the kitchen.
Well, I'm sorry, but what exactly do you think an Aston Martin Vantage with a V12 engine is going to be like?
You might as well wonder whether the result of a liaison between Angelina Jolie and George Clooney would be good-looking. Or whether the coming together of China and America would produce a dominant world superpower. It's a great car. And it's a great engine. Which means the result is precisely what you would expect. It's superb. The end.
[This really isn't good enough – Ed.]
Oh, OK then, if you insist. The engine was born many years ago when Ford welded two Mondeo V6s together and Aston slotted the resulting 6.0-liter V12 into the Vanquish. It was way better than the sum of its parts, and it still is today.
The figures don't really do it justice. You get 510 hp and 420 lb-ft of torque, but you get that much power and even more torque from a four-door AMG Mercedes these days. And while the Aston sounds delicious, its crisp, precise exhaust note is drowned out completely by the burning dinosaur noises coming from the back of the Benz.
It's the feel that matters, though, and this is where the Aston scores. An AMG V8 feels as though it's running on a blend of coal and dead animals, whereas Aston's V12 revs so fast and so smoothly that you're going to spend most of your time sitting on the limiter, scarcely believing it can be time to change gears again.
Speaking of which. The car we drove is a six-speed manual. There were no paddles behind the steering wheel. There was no torque converter. There was no double-clutch frippery. You do the work yourself by shifting a big gear lever that feels like it might actually be the Terminator's dick. I like a manual in a car of this type. It's like growing your own vegetables versus buying some from the supermarket.
Actually, it's nothing like growing your own vegetables, but you know what I mean.
Is it fast? Yes, very. It's one of those cars where you pull out to overtake and think, Oooh, this might not be on. But then you pass the tractor and are back on your side of the road 100 yards before the blind corner that gave you cause for concern. Maybe a Lamborghini Gallardo is a tad faster. But in the real world, it's not the sort of difference that matters.
What does matter are the extraordinarily small amount of differences between the new V12 and the old V8. They've changed the front crash structure so the engine fits, they've fitted carbon brakes from the DBS, and carbon seats, and they've smothered the rear wheels in wider tires. And that's about it, apart from a Sport button on the dash that's just what it says: a button marked Sport on the dash. What it does, I have no idea.
However, here's the clever bit. The V12 engine weighs 220 pounds more than the V8, but the new car is only 100 pounds heavier than before. This is almost entirely due to the lightweight seats and brakes. Which does beg the question, Why not fit them to the V8 as well?
Whatever, the V12 certainly doesn't feel heavy. It darts about like a bee, and always feels so unflappable and composed I'm surprised it doesn't come with a busby. There's no sense of nose heaviness, but then, why would there be? In a V8, 49 percent of the weight is up front. In the V12, it's only 51 percent. The change is minimal. Sure, it might not be as pin sharp as a Porsche GT3 — another manual car, in case you're interested — but then again it rides better.
That's a surprise, because the rear anti-roll bar is a whopping 75 percent stiffer than it is on the V8 and the spring rates at the front are beefed up by 80 percent. That should make even the smoothest road feel like a flight of stairs, but it doesn't. No one would ever call the V12 Vantage uncomfortable. Even the carbon seats, which kill your buttocks in other cars, feel as soft as a fat labradog.
This car, then, could almost have been designed with me in mind. It has the right gearbox, the right blend of handling and ride, and the right amount of power. I drove it on my usual test route through the Cotswolds and, must say, it was exactly what I'd been expecting: Brilliant. One of the very, very best.
There are some niggles, though. It comes with the Pirelli P Zero Corsa tires that hang onto the road like it's a ledge and there's a 2,000 foot drop. The grip is outstanding. But they are billed as dry bias tires, which is another way of saying that in a light shower, there will be no grip at all and you will soon be flying through the windscreen.
In a track-day car like the GT3, we can see the point of specialist tires like this. When tenths matter, they make sense. But the Aston isn't really a track-day car. It's an everyday sports gt. It has a boot and MP3 connectivity and A/C and sat-nav. So why can't it be used in the rain? Seems daft, if you ask me.
Worse still, though, is the bonnet, which is now fitted with four giant carbon-fiber snow shoes. Aston makes noises about how these unpainted vents reduce air pressure in the engine compartment, but we all know the real reason. It's so the V12 buyer is not muddled up with the riff raff in the V8s.
A stupid, stupid decision that panders to stupid, stupid people.
My biggest worry with this car is the engine. It's a personal thing, but I've always preferred V8s to V12s. I know a V8 is inherently unbalanced and a V12 is inherently smoother than a well-made custard. But here's the problem. Think V8 and you think of those muscle cars with their pig-iron motors that last forever and can be fixed with a hammer when forever runs out. Think V12s and you think of a brittle Ferrari, stationary in a cloud of steam. Big V12, in my mind, is a code for big bills.
And so I'd be faced with a terrible dilemma if I were in the market for an Aston right now.
If I were to push my prejudice to one side and decide I wanted a V12, the car I'd want is the DBS. Chiefly because the bonnet doesn't look like an eskimo's boot box. But also because the DBS is one of the greatest cars ever made. It's a full-on masterpiece, that thing, and even my old friend Tiff Needell, who normally loathes Astons, agrees.
The trouble is that it costs $269,000, and that's too much. It's so much, in fact, that I'd have to convince myself that the new Vantage, at around $209,000, is 99 percent of the DBS for $60,000 less. But is it? Could I ever be sure?
I was pondering this earlier on today while blasting down a sun-flickered Cotswold road in my wife's 4.7-liter V8 Vantage convertible. And then the obvious answer hit me: The car I'd buy is the one I was in.
Why?
Simple. Zero to 60: 4.7 seconds. Top speed: 180. Price: Around $120,000. You don't need any more information than that.
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Stunning car and awesome photography again!!!
