Aston Martins have always been hand-bitingly beautiful, but peel away the designer label, and you’d find underpinnings from ancient Jaguars and infotainment screens Volvo and Mercedes had long since retired. But the latest models – the Vantage, Vanquish Valhalla – feel like a turnaround and the newest of the lot is the Vantage Roadster.
According to Aston, it is the fastest Roadster on sale, albeit not in the traditional sense. Just 6.8 seconds is all you need to drop or erect the roof, and you can do either at speeds up to 31mph. Or standing up to 2m away from the car.
The roof’s ‘Z’ mechanism is simple, keeping the car’s centre of gravity lower and disbanding the need for a tonneau cover. It means the eight-layer drop-top weighs just 60kg more than the coupé, and – because the Roadster was designed in parallel with the hard top – it should also be remarkably stiff thanks to strengthening at the rear and shear panels that pull it all together like a corset. It even gets a lightweight rollover system made from aluminium produced using a process called – look away now, gents – ‘Castrusion’, which we’re sure could have been given a better name.
The result is a car that is as stunning as you’d expect of an Aston Martin. With two seats and a small opening, the Aston looks as tight as a Savile Row suit with a windscreen raking over your head and a ducktail spoiler sending air up at the back of the car.
The Roadster looks great roof up or down, and you can have said soft top finished in black, red, blue, or a black-and-silver finish. You also get three new paint choices – Iridescent Sapphire, Satin Iridescent Sapphire and Bronze Flare – four 21-inch wheel designs, 21 livery colours and seven brake-caliper finishes.
But the best part of the new Roadster’s roof is that it comes attached to the new Vantage, a car that seems to have answered many of the questions left unanswered by the old model.
Perhaps one of the areas that didn’t need attention was performance, but Aston couldn’t resist turning the wick up and then some. With 665PS (489kW) and 800Nm (590lb ft) of torque, the new Vantage has 155PS (114kW) and 115Nm (85lb ft) more than the old model, getting from 0-62mph in 3.5 seconds and onto a hair-rearranging 202mph top speed. Dropping the roof simply gets you closer to the action.
In terms of handling, Aston has recalibrated the rear dampers and altered the transaxle gearbox mounts to take account of the Roadster’s 49:51 front-to-rear weight distribution. But the Roadster gets the same unequal-length wishbones at the front and multi-link rear as the coupé, and the same substantial six-pot front brake calipers biting 410mm discs.
Although we hate to admit it, it’s the new infotainment that counts, with a pure black 10.25-inch screen and (mercifully) a handful of conventional buttons that look like they belong in the bespoke surroundings of the rest of the interior.
It completes the package, making the Roadster feel like a genuinely luxurious item rather than a parts-bin special in a gorgeous body. Expect sales to be strong when the car hits showrooms priced from £175,000 – £10,000 more than the coupé – in April.
Report by Russell Campbell
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