The stunning 2025 Vantage, finished here in a polarizing Cosmopolitan Yellow paint job.
For model year 2025, Aston Martin’s long-tenured Vantage receives a serious revamp. The revisions total up to much more than a mid-generation facelift, though. To start, the AMG-sourced twin-turbocharged V8 leaps up to a walloping 656 horsepower and 590 lb-ft of torque, which represents a triple-digit increase over the outgoing Vantage. That serious power bump then dictated a comprehensive exterior redesign, highlighted by additional aero strakes and a wider stance.
Almost more importantly, though, the Vantage’s interior now matches the rest of the Aston Martin lineup with improved tech, connectivity, and tactile touchpoints borrowed from the DBX707 SUV, DB12 grand tourer, and flagship Vanquish. Just one week that I spent with a loaner in Los Angeles proved how well the 2025 Vantage performs as a perfect daily driver that made a serious statement everywhere I drove.
Newly "tuned by Aston Martin," the Vantage's AMG-sourced engine ratchets up power figures by more ... [+]
From rush hour traffic to highway cruising and canyon carving, my loaner’s Cosmopolitan Yellow paint job turned heads. No doubt Aston Martin hoped the shade, which adds a bit of metallic flake to the bright hue, would pop in photos—but to my eye, the brilliance actually results in many of the more sleek and sinewy details getting blown out. A dark green, a la the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team racing color, or even a silver in classic James Bond fashion, might serve the form better.
The spacious interior surprised me more than anything, though. At six-foot-one with long limbs, I simply scooted the driver’s seat not even close to all the way back and found my perfect position, while the steering wheel also offered plenty of fore and aft adjustment. Visibility from my low perch in the cockpit wound up just okay, in the grand scheme of all cars, but more than sufficient for something so spectacular to drive.
A Thorough Update, Inside and Out
The new Vantage's interior serves as a reminder for how design and technology can improve the ... [+]
Any amount of time spent flogging the Vantage in the hills of Malibu, either on a weekday lunch break or a Sunday cruise, provided the real peaks of my time with the loaner. Where the road opens up, the amped-up power output is no joke, delivering the kind of low-end punch and top-end pace that combine to make for the most enjoyable, if not quite punishing, acceleration possible. Yet I quickly learned that a claimed 0-to-60 time of 3.4 seconds matters less than the pleasure of popping through gears on the eight-speed ZF transaxle more slowly, giving the engine time to build up through turbo boost rather than sticking to the higher revs only.
The transaxle layout, which places the gearbox between the rear wheels, helps to improve the Vantage’s front-to-rear weight distribution. The resulting balance still verges on a tail-happy nature, though, since Aston declined to switch to all-wheel drive as so many other manufacturers tend to do when ramping up to serious power figures. Traction and stability control programming therefore comes into play, and Aston allows for more discrete levels of computer intervention than most of the competition. I fiddled through to the Sport and Sport+ drive modes regularly, and can confirm that in just about anything other than Wet, the rear tires tend to jump out of line with any indiscriminate application of throttle.
Spending Every Day in the New Aston Martin Vantage
A look at the hindquarters of the muscular new Vantage, equally at home in rush hour traffic or ... [+]
The steering tightens up nicely, though, so I just whipped back around for a quick hit of countersteer to control any slip angle. Yet in Sport+ especially, the electrically assisted steering’s firmness actually dulls back the finer end of tire feedback. I wound up preferring a middle ground, and on my own Vantage I might set up a custom drive mode with the mid-level steering and suspension damping to allow for a bit more communication and compliance. Of course, then I would open up the throaty exhaust valves and dial in the quickest shifts from the transaxle—even in normal city driving, that combination winds up just about perfect.
That ability to subtly adjust the Vantage’s character helps to establish this new facelifted model year as something of a supercar predator. Helped by the transaxle layout, the massive power gains, and sublime styling inside and out, the Vantage also requires less of the sacrifices dictated by low-slung mid-engine supercars that demand constant vigilance to avoid scraping on speed bumps, rough canyon roads, or driveways.
Meanwhile, at $191,000 to start, this new Vantage also costs less than a Porsche 911 Turbo, and much less than a Turbo S—but with plenty more power and panache than both. Plus, the rear hatchback allows for easy access to far more storage space than expected. Throw in the sportiest dynamics in the Aston Martin lineup, and the 2025 Vantage easily earned entree onto my list of favorite cars that I drove in 2024.
