You sit low in the Aston Martin V8 Vantage, high bonnet bulging in front, windscreen shallow. You feel power ready to burst forth, an impression heightened by the way the Vantage’s bodywork hugs the mechanicals beneath: flared-out wheelarches, taut, pulled-in corners, compact muscularity. Press the start button, hear the V8 bark its awakening, snick the rear-mounted Graziano transaxle into the first of its six forward gears, roar off. A real supercar awakes!
The engine note hardens as you approach 4,000rpm and an exhaust by-pass valve opens. It opens briefly on start-up, too, for added drama. At the same time the engine gets a second wind and rushes so keenly towards its limit that you wonder why what exactly would happen if the limiter was disabled. So the temptation is to rev it all the time, belting out the V8 hammer-beat, flicking up and down the gears.
~~Pretty torquey, smoother, flowing
But you don’t need to over-drive the Aston like that. It’s actually pretty torquey low down, just less bombastic; it’s smoother and quicker to carry a higher gear through a corner, flowing and drifting and revelling in the the most interactive Aston in years. Its steering is quick, crisp and meaty, and its lack of ultimate transparency doesn’t matter so much when there are so many other dynamic clues acting on your body. Every corner is taken in a gently tail-out attitude, and you sense that if there was a little less grip you’d be doing delicious drifts to order. The Aston rides well, too.
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