Aston Martin Vantage

Is there more to this wild Aston than headline-grabbing horsepower? At Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings plc, to give its full name, 2024 is shaping up to be a monumental year. The firm, whose lineage stretches back 111 years, has announced that it will be returning to the top class at Le Mans, with two Valkyries poised to enter the World Endurance Championship. Elsewhere, an all-new Vanquish flagship – Aston’s emphatic, 824bhp response to the Ferrari 12Cilindri – has also been launched, along with a run of highly profitable, Fernando Alonso-approved special editions in the form of the manual V12 Valiant. Behind the scenes, testing of the mid-engined, £3 million-plus Valhalla hybrid supercar is beginning to hit its stride and the share price is showing signs of life after the delayed roll-out of the DB12 last year. Oh, and Adrian Hallmark, the hugely respected ex-Bentley boss, has recently joined as CEO.However, perhaps none of the above is as significant as the arrival of the new Aston Martin Vantage. Aston’s entry-level model – if you can assign that term to a 202mph car with 656bhp and 590lb ft – will be the V8-fired engine room of the company’s sales, outside of the DBX super-SUV. It is the sports car that will most often represent the Brit manufacturer in scraps with opposition from Bentley, Porsche, Mercedes-AMG, Maserati and, of course, those talented folks in Maranello. As we will soon discover, with this latest iteration the Vantage is also being repositioned as more a supercar-baiting athlete than ever, and as such is emblematic of the direction in which chairman Lawrence Stroll wants to take Aston. In its products, the company is openly gunning for Ferrari.So strap in to read about a car that looks similar to its predecessor, and indeed is quite similar fundamentally, but that is actually rather an altered beast, with myriad developments under that taut skin. Has a 30% uplift in power rendered a previously road-usable and approachable Aston Martin overcooked? Has straight-line speed come at the expense of poise and genuinely exploitable, enjoyable handling? Time to find out.