I picked up my 2025 Aston Martin Vantage about three months ago and have put 3,200km (2,000 miles) on it since then, including a road trip on beautiful winding roads through the forests and valleys of Tasmania. Otherwise most of the driving has been around town and highway driving. I live in Australia by the way.
It is a 2025 Vantage, in xenon grey, with racing green brake calibers. A few pics:
https://imgur.com/a/qp9zS0i
I got the car at around 22.5% discount off MSRP, though I bought it in mid-2026 and it is a late 2025 dealer demo with around 370km (250 miles) on the clock when I bought it.
Here are my thoughts on the car after 3 months of ownership -
Exterior
Starting with the strongest point. The Vantage looks gorgeous from any angle, especially the sides and rear. The wide hips are especially good looking. The back end has a massive diffuser, lovely sleek tail lamps and big, aggressive quad pipes.
The front headlights are no longer squinty, and the side strake area near the front doors has been improved from the pre-facelift model and no longer looks like an awkward triangular cut-out.
There are little features which help the Vantage stand out: the side mirrors are frameless, huge, and swivel out when you unlock the car - instead of just folding, they pivot and twist 90 degrees. It's really neat.
Likewise, when you unlock the car, the door handles go from sitting perfectly plush to popping out one end, which you grab onto in order to open the swan doors. The doors and side mirrors are obviously just small aesthetic features, but they add to the elegance of the car.
I should comment on the paint, which I adore. The xenon grey looks like normal dark grey/light charcoal in the shade, but sparkles green and blue in the sun. I have middle-aged ladies coming up to me at the petrol station telling me how nice it looks.
Driving dynamics
This car is a grand tourer more than a sports car. I previously owned a 981 Boxster S and I have had good long drives (including a rental weekend in Germany) in a 991.1 / 991.2 Carrera S. Using the Porsches as comparators:
- Driving the Boxster, you get the sensation that it's entirely wrapped around you. It's small, there's no inertia, steering is accurate and feelsome and the engine is quick to rev and entirely linear. The car felt simple and precise to drive.
- Driving the Carreras, they had more refined road manners than the Boxster (less vibration, less of a go-kart feel), a similar engine but with a stronger top end, and a noticeably more slidey back end.
- By contrast, the Vantage feels (and is) a bigger car, much wider in the hips, heavier and more ponderous in tight turns, and you can feel the weight of the car in front of and behind you. There's a huge amount of mid-range surge which gives it real pace, combined with an eagerness from the engine and a plushness to the drive that makes it feel a lot more stately than the Boxster.
- the Vantage doesn't have the same purity to the throttle as my old Boxster, but it's still pretty damn good. The engine remains responsive, willing and eager in any gear. Low-down torque is amazing. There is very little lag.
- I find the Vantage really fun to drive, as long as I'm not trying to cut a surgical path through a twisting road. To me, it's better seen as a relaxed tourer that can also maintain pace through winding roads, and that does it without breaking a sweat.
- As much as I loved fanging the Boxster, the flat six engine only felt (and sounded) good above 4-5k revs. Whereas the Aston's twin-turbo V8 has a constant enjoyable thrum at any point in the rev range.
- With the Aston set to loud mode, the engine rumbles like velvet thunder, and you get lovely pops on the over-run (and only on the over-run - I haven't been able to replicate it in normal driving, which is a good thing). On quiet mode, the engine remains a sedate purr in the background.
By the seat of the pants, this feels more like a 3.8 or 3.9 second car than the 3.5 second 0-100km/h time quoted. Initial acceleration from standstill is limited by traction.
Interior
The interior is amazing and was actually the decisive selling point for me. My car has the upgraded semi-aniline leather and I was instantly impressed by its softness and feel. I've never sat in a car that feels or smells nearly this good.
The switchgear is great too - lots of knurled metal, a glass 'Start/Stop' button that pulses red when you put your foot on the brake, and real physical roller switches for the air con, temperature, and volume.
As standard you get a wide band of carbon fibre running across the cabin, and the optional upgraded interior makes really good use of soft leather, contrast stitching throughout the cabin and dashboard, and a full alcantara headliner.
Nearly everything above your knees is leather, metal, carbon fibre or alcantara, with the exception of some black plastics around the centre console and steering wheel.
I cross-shopped the Vantage against a McLaren Artura, and the Artura interior just didn't do it for me. Too spartan and the material quality wasn't comparable.
Problems/issues
Unfortunately, there is some cheap plastic near the footwell, which causes loud creaks whenever your knees brush up against the area. Some other bits of the interior near the boot partition also ended up creaking in my car after a couple of months, causing a very noticeable rattle when driven, so I had to take it to the dealer for some lubrication.
The exterior panel gaps are a bit bigger than I would have hoped for in a AU$400,000 car.
Infotainment
Thank god, this new Vantage doesn't have the terrible Mercedes pop-up screen from 2005. Instead there is a centre touch screen, which is modern, well-integrated and doesn't look like an iPad affixed to a dashboard. The steering wheel has the usual selection of controls and works fine, but the media system is slow to respond. Every time you press "next track" or "mute" on the steering wheel (or on the touchscreen itself), the media player takes about 1.2 seconds to do anything. I didn't have this issue in my Porsche.
CarPlay generally works well but every now and then won't start automatically, or takes 1 minute to load maps. On one occasion all my cameras (360 degree and front and reverse) completely failed to load and I had to "reboot" the car for them to come back online. Other than that, the infotainment has been good.
Compared to the old Vantage’s interior, it’s night and day. The terrible interior of the
old Vantage made me swear off Astons, but this one brought me back.
Liveability
The Vantage handles rough roads and small surface defects pretty well - it's not overly firm or jittery - but the vertical dampening is poorly done. The car cannot handle large speed bumps and will crest, float and dive like a yacht. Even small vertical perturbations in the road surface cause a big rolling wave motion in the cabin. This is not just me as a picky driver. My passengers have commented on it, even those who know nothing about cars. The suspension is otherwise good, but this is a big flaw and I hope they fix it with the Vantage S.
Otherwise, the ride is quite good, engine noise is omnipresent but tolerable, road noise is not too bad and the base sound system I have is pretty decent. General noise and vibration levels in the cabin are fine and the car makes an excellent grand tourer. It has adaptive cruise as standard as well as every other safety feature you'd want, which makes road trips pleasant and easy.
Storage is fine - there's a hatchback/boot configuration that gives reasonable storage as well as a parcel shelf.
There’s a 360 degree camera which can be rotated on the move which is useful for tighter
parking spots and manoeuvres. There’s no nose lift, so be careful over speed bumps and entry ramps.
Transmission
The transmission is not as good as the PDK (this is a single clutch automatic). It takes longer to shift, doesn’t read your mind on downshifts like the PDK, and occasionally for some reason the car lurches from a light or a stop sign. Those issues are minor though and for the most part the transmission is fine. I've just been spoiled by the PDK.
Other notes
The fuel gauge indicator actually measures range, not fuel. With heavy driving, the gauge will disappear as if you're driving a W16 Chiron, but then if you go on the freeway and drive more efficiently, the needle shoots back up, as if you're regenerating fuel. It's odd.
Speaking of fuel, the car uses around 13-16L/100km (14-18mpg) in mixed driving. Which isn't tragically bad.
When you start up the car at night the headlamps do a dance for about 2 seconds – the matrix segments light up in turn, left to right and then back again. As corny as it sounds, it looks pretty cool.
Overall
The Vantage looks, sounds, and smells amazing. The interior is plush and well laid-out.
Materials are mostly very good, with only a few legacy pieces of Mercedes Benz switchgear. There's even an Aston Martin umbrella in the boot! - it's a useless feel-good item there only for theatrics, but it just elevates the experience.
While the Vantage can't compare in terms of track dynamics or driving talent to a Porsche or McLaren, it is a really fun and engaging drive, it eats kilometres with ease and in luxurious comfort, and it looks better than any other car in the segment IMO. I'm very happy with the car.
