As Aston Martin launches the latest Vantage, Octane looks back to the marque’s first junior sports car – and discovers a bargain high-performance landmark, in V8, Roadster and V12 form
Words Peter Tomalin Photography Matt Howell
One by one they pull out of the layby. The two V8s go first, the open-throated pulsing of their exhausts punching holes in the air before the V12 takes off in pursuit, its richer, keening note cutting through them. It’s a veritable feast for the ear and, it has to be said, the three are pretty easy on the eye, too. Hard to credit that it’s more than 20 years since the VH Vantage first appeared. On today’s evidence its appeal has diminished not one jot.
The public got its first glimpse of the baby Aston in the form of the AMV8 Vantage concept, unveiled at the Detroit motor show in 2003 – the same year that Aston Martin opened its brand new factory at Gaydon in Warwickshire. The Vantage wasn’t quite the first model built there – that honour went to the DB9 – but, when production finally started in late 2005, the Vantage quickly took the lion’s share of sales and launched Aston Martin into the most successful period of its long and often precarious history.
It would stay in production – with the V12 joining the range in 2009 – all the way through to 2018, by which point a remarkable 25,050 examples had been sold. No other Aston comes close, and it achieved all this by staying true to AM values but packaging them in a way that was attractive and accessible (original list price was a whisker under 80 grand) to the widest possible audience.
That still holds true today. If you’ve always hankered after an Aston but don’t want to be saddled with a whole heap of temperament and expense, then the 2005-2018 Vantage is awfully tempting. I should know. A little over three years ago I succumbed and bought one. Very similar, in fact, to the red car you see here. I sold mine a couple of months back and a large part of me still misses it, really rather badly.
Indeed, catching sight of Adrian Chettle’s 2007 Toro Red coupé stirs a mix of emotions. Adrian’s car represents the VH Vantage in its original form: 4.3-litre 380bhp V8, six-speed manual, seven-spoke alloys and bodywork in its purest state. It wears its years amazingly well. As do Michael Kheng’s 2009 4.7-litre Roadster and Charles Porter’s 2010 V12 coupé. Between them they cover the main production variants in the Vantage’s long life.
Our plan is to visit some of the places and the roads that played a
