IN THE SPOTLIGHT
CARS I PEOPLE I SCOOPS I MOTORSPORT I ANALYSIS – THE MONTH ACCORDING TO CAR
Aston Martin is holding off the future with the latest Vantage – will that prove to be a mistake?
When Aston Martin announced there was going to be a new Vantage, some questioned how a car famed for its brutish, old-school take on the sports coupe would translate into the electrification-dominated era of the modern performance car.
After all, key rival Porsche is about to unveil anew hybrid and eventually an electric version of the 911, while if there is going to be a successor to the Audi R8 it will almost certainly be fully electric. So what will Aston’s response to these new challenges and opportunities be?
We have an answer: the new £165k Vantage has zero electrification.
It’s a move that may well be as divisive as it is emphatic. Every last one of the AMG-sourced 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8’s 656bhp is down to internal combustion. There’s no hybrid element, and no all-wheel drive either. Rather than get rid of the quad tailpipes, Aston has made them even bigger. This is Aston Martin putting all its Vantage chips on black and spinning the wheel.
However, don’t confuse old-school with outdated. The Vantage may read like a throwback, but there’s no shortage of tech designed to help the driver get the most out of the car. Starting with the chassis, Active Vehicle Dynamics Control takes information from the powertrain, brakes and e-diff sensors to build a picture of what the car is doing and apply the stability control accordingly.
A 6D-IMU inertial measurement unit – similar to the Dynamic Chassis Sensor in the Ferrari 296 GTB – monitors six axes (surge, heave, sway, roll, pitch and yaw) to help it manage the stability control systems.
But what happens when you want to let loose and turn it off? Enter Aston’s new Adjustable Traction Control (ATC). Switching through eight different positions (in addition to fully off), ATC disables the ESC’s yaw control function, so while there’s no off-throttle assistance it will intervene under power depending on what setting you’re on – 1 being the most stable, 8 being the lairiest.
Throw in an e-diff able to adapt to the type of corner (and react in just 60 milliseconds) and it bodes well for maintaining the Vantage’s position as the looser, less po-faced alternative to a Porsche 911.
But wait a second. All this new hardware and a new cabin (which we’ll get on to in a bit); what does this mean for the Vantage’s weight? The previous model tipped the scales at 1530kg dry, while this new version brings that up to 1605kg, with the mass spread evenly between the front and rear. No doubt, this would have been heavier had Aston gone down the electrification route. W
