The Aston Martin V8 Vantage may be one of the ageing rockers of the sports car world, but in 2012 it received one of its most substantial overhauls. Ray Leathern sets off for his first ever drive in one to see whats what.
I’m in Gauteng for a short, one day visit. My itinerary is packed tighter than a supermarket shelf of unsold magazines. Land from Cape Town at 08h00, take Gautrain into Sandton, collect Aston Martin, make my way into the congested Johannesburg CBD, have a meeting, drive to congested Pretoria, have another meeting, hopefully find some nice roads to test the Vantage on at that stage, drive to a cocktail party at the Norwegian Embassy in Pretoria, exclusively drink orange juice, return Aston Martin to Sandton dealership at 17h30, take Gautrain back to the airport and fly home. The Aston Martin V8 Vantage needs to be crisp and quick for me to not miss any of that.
The experience starts at the dealership with me thumbing through the Aston Martin brochure. I love casting an eye over one of these. I believed there was a limit to how often you could say something about a front engine, rear drive Aston Martin, but that hasn’t stopped the bumptious scribes in Gaydon from trying. The ‘hand-built aesthetics’, ‘sensual lines’, ‘composed maturity of its purebred performance’, are all very good and well, but they sing a familiar tune to what I told myself when I drove the DBS, the Virage and the Rapide.
I suppose I need to get over myself. Aston Martin doesn’t tweak their cars every two years. They don’t have swarms of robots building a thousand cars a day. They are British, hand-built and a bit old-fashioned. Can one knock them when they tickle your eye sockets into full, ocular overdrive? After all, 2012 saw the release of the Vantage S and many styling features and upgrades made their way onto the common or garden variety V8 Vantage you see here.
The first thing you need to know about the R1.6 million Aston Martin V8 Vantage Coupé is that the 4.7-litre V8 produces 313 kW and 450 Nm of torque. It will get you to 100 km/h in 4.6 seconds before it tops out at 280 km/h. The car I will drive has the optional 7-speed Sportshift automated manual transmission, which has now replaced the sloppy 6-speed version. Aston say that with the additional gear, closer ratios, lower final drive and a quicker, refined shift quality, this new gearbox provides faster and more precise shifts. Only time on the open road will show us that.
As I look at the car on the showroom floor I can’t help but notice it looks sharper than before. My black test car is doing well to hide the subtle styling tweaks inspired by the Vantage S and N400 limited editions, but if you look closely they are definitely there. At the front, a lower bumper with an aerodynamic splitter houses a larger air intake. At the rear, a sculpted diffuser adds necessary go-faster drama, while wider side sills complete the V8 Vantage’s more muscular look.
Further dynamic enhancements include quicker steering, bigger brakes and 10 mm wider tyres than before. Hill Start Assist is new on the car, for more precise control on steep inclines so you don’t roll backwards embarrassingly. So, not the world’s vastest range of improvements then, but like the subtle styling, hopefully they all come together to make a big improvement on the car as a whole.
The crystal key jams into the centre console to prime the V8 and it fires to the familiar Aston tune of fire and brimstone. The suede roof lining, hand-stitched leather seats, glass and chrome finished buttons all fit the bill perfectly for a luxury sports car. A new and improved, very clear and legible, satellite navigation system rises from the dash as I set it for my first Jo’Burg CBD based destination.
Burbling out of the Sandton dealership in traffic, the Vantage is quiet, restrained and comfortable. The steering is heavy at low speeds, but visibility out the cabin is surprisingly generous. Before seeking out the anonymity of the open road I must come to terms with the cars urban attitude. Straight away I feel the gearbox is clunky if left in ‘auto’ mode. I’ve imposed a time period on myself wherein I must leave it in ‘auto’ and not flip around with the paddles.
It is difficult, jerky, and as you ease open the throttle from a traffic light you lunge forward and dive backwards again as soon as you lift off the throttle. It is less than dignified. Life is just too short and I put an end to my self-imposed ‘auto’ mode and start flipping the paddles. This still feels slack, so I slip the car into ‘sport’ mode to speed the shifts up even further. Now we’re talking.
Once on the turbulent Gauteng highways, mercifully, the steering lightens up. It feels athletic and direct, assuring me more is to be had. The Vantage, at this medium sort of speed, feels firm but comfortable enough. I’m very impressed by the feeling of the body shell’s rigidity. Genuinely, driving over a highway join, manhole cover or one of the ‘wide-awake’ rumble strips before a junction, is a physically pleasurable experience. The acceleration feels far from brutal, foregoing the forced induction of modern, high-performance cars of course, but the sound is there and so are the revs. With maximum power and torque only arriving around the 5 000 r/min mark you need to be committed to ‘keeping your foot in it’, as they say in the classics.
Both meetings are disappointing because I can’t get a parking spot directly outside the respective buildings to show off the V8 Vantage. There should be an unwritten law with security guards that Astons get free passage to the front of the building, no ifs ands or buts. Anyhow, now I get to show the sporty Vantage a few corners as I detour via Harties and the Magaliesburg area.
Three things become apparent at speed. The ride quality on less than perfect roads is only for hardcore performance enthusiasts. I like it, but it’s very taught, firm and prone to firm judders on imperfect roads. The gearbox doesn’t like to be rushed when the going gets really fast either. Down changes as you’re leaning hard on the brakes are the worst, slow, but up changes on the rev limiter are fractionally better. Finally, the wind noise from the A-pillar and road noise from the wider tyres becomes noticeably loud inside the cabin as well, which I genuinely didn’t expect from a luxurious sports car of the Aston’s calibre. Although, when you consider the chassis is as old as it is, it’s probably inevitable.
Photo Credit: Lesa Van Rooyen
With the high-speed stuff done and dusted, and the leafy surrounds of the Norwegian Embassy upon me, I park the Aston on the lawn in front of the embassy (to hell with the security guards) and it strikes me that that is probably where it works best. It is the ultimate car to arrive in. It isn’t big and brash like a DBS, but it is perfectly proportioned and ever so slightly restrained. While I secretly wish I could’ve known what all the other attendees at this party thought of me as I arrived, I’m confident in the fact that it wasn’t something negative.
For the rest of the party, I could see people taking an interest in me, which really doesn’t happen all that often, and if they weren’t, they were slyly casting an eye down the lawn to the beautiful Aston Martin. It is then that you realise as a car lover and a humanitarian, that to deride the Vantage for things like the wind noise, a lack of torque and a jerky gearbox in ‘auto’ mode is just plain harsh and unnecessary, now isn’t it?
Photo Credit: Lesa Van Rooyen
