2025 Aston Martin Vantage First Test Review: Proper Performance Car

Motor Trend

19-05-2025

Pros The best Vantage ever
Absolutely gorgeous
Fun to drive and a rip-roaring exhaust tone Cons Carbon brakes aren't quite as precise as the best
For track junkies, there are slightly better handlers
Hood release still deep in passenger footwell (do you really care?)
If you don't know from reading our previous coverage of the latest Aston Martin Vantage that arrived on the market for 2025 as a coupe and in Roadster form as a 2026 model, the gist is this: Aston is focused on making serious performance cars rather than squishier grand-touring machines that happen to go fast in straight lines.
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Based on our extensive seat time in the Aston Martin Vantage coupe and a day spent in the new 2026 Roadster, our seat-of-the-pants feel confirms the work done by the engineers at Aston's Gaydon, England, home base has paid off. But we hadn't until now hooked our data-collecting gear to the new Vantage to put real numbers alongside our perception of improved performance.
Power Up
The 2025 Aston Martin Vantage continues to employ a Mercedes-AMG-sourced 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8, which Aston says it tunes to its own specifications, but the new version produces a lot more power and torque than before. Thanks to bigger turbos, new cam profiles, a compression ratio of 8.6:1 versus 10.5 (meaning the turbos can run more boost), and a better cooling package, the engine produces peak figures of 656 horsepower and 590 lb-ft of torque compared to the old car's 503 hp and 505 lb-ft.
The upshot: Aston Martin says the 2025 Vantage accelerates to 60 mph in 3.4 seconds and reaches a top speed of 202 mph, the latter number being 7 mph faster than before. That said, the front-engine/rear-wheel-drive architecture and 50/50 weight distribution front to rear keeps that official 0–60 time a mere 0.1 second quicker than the old car's, thanks to the layout's traction-limited nature.
Considering many automakers' official acceleration times often don't precisely match our real-world testing results, we were rather curious to find out if Aston is being conservative or optimistic with its claim.
Hit the Gas
As it transpired, it's being neither and is instead dead-on accurate. Once we deactivated traction and stability control, selected the Sport+ drive program, and sent the car down the dragstrip with a 2,000-rpm launch-controlled getaway, it returned a 0–60-mph time of … 3.4 seconds.
The surreal thing, however, is that other than the V-8's aggressive, loud, and massively satisfying sounds, the launch experience isn't as exciting as you'd expect in a car this quick. There's no drama, no sense of unhinged fury. Instead, it launches incredibly smoothly, other than a bit of wheelspin during the first second of the run.
While the Vantage's 3.4-second 0–60 time is certainly solid in today's terms, the quarter mile lets the car use its muscle to more effect. It flashed past the marker in 11.2 seconds at 132.0 mph, and it was unsurprisingly still pulling strong at that point.
We never had an opportunity to test the previous Vantage coupe like this, but we did test a 2021 Vantage Roadster to the tune of an 11.9-second time at 119.3 mph. Granted, that convertible version weighed 60 pounds more than this 3,878-pound coupe, according to our scales, but the improved quarter-mile performance is significant nonetheless.
In the name of a more contemporary comparison with an in-market rival, we also recently tested a 2025 Porsche 911 Carrera GTS T-Hybrid that returned a nutso 0–60 time of 2.6 seconds and a quarter-mile pass of 10.7 at 129.7 mph.
Those results came despite the Carrera's 121-hp and 141-lb-ft deficits to the Vantage. That says a lot about the Porsche's lighter weight (280 pounds) and better traction off the line, though you can easily see where the big-power Aston begins to severely claw back the acceleration gap as speeds rise well past 100 mph.
Braking and Handling
When it's time to stop the 2026 Aston Martin Vantage, there's no need to fret. However, be aware that when equipped as our test car was with optional carbon-ceramic brakes, the Vantage performs best when those brakes have a fair amount of heat in them.
We noted this on the street during a chilly morning drive (ambient temps in the high 40s) on Southern California's challenging and twisting Angeles Crest Highway, when the brake pedal initially felt a bit soft. That carried over to the test track, where we found the stopping distances got shorter and shorter with each attempt, yielding a 60–0-mph best of 99 feet—just 4 feet longer than the lighter 911 Carrera GTS T-Hybrid needed to do the same.
And we were happy to discover the initially average-feeling brake pedal firmed up in the process, reminding us why we liked it so much during our first drive opportunity on a Spanish racetrack last year.
As for handling, the Vantage posted a best skidpad figure of 1.04 g (average) versus the 911's 1.11—a solid number but not an extraordinary one despite the car's massive Michelin PS5 tires. On our proprietary figure-eight course, however, the Aston was more of a handful. It posted a best lap of 23.3 seconds at 0.94 g (average) compared to the Porsche's 22.4 seconds and 0.99 g. Clear advantage to the German, and we found the Vantage to be inconsistent here. Worth noting as well: The eight-speed automatic transmission was sometimes lazy to downshift, leading to us switch the gearbox to manual-shift mode. That's something we previously learned is preferable while driving the car aggressively, as the gearbox isn't as quick or sharp as a twin-clutch unit.
Running the coupe in Track mode and with its adjustable traction control switched off completely, it would sometimes rotate into the corners nicely but at other times fall into lap-time-killing understeer. And even with both traction and stability control turned off, we were frustrated during corner exits by the car's tendency to seemingly dial back the engine's power until you get the steering wheel mostly straight.
We don't have a clear understanding of why, though it could be the Aston's particular combination of mechanical grip and its dynamics-controlling software package and electronic-differential characteristics simply don't like our admittedly unique figure-eight layout.
We say this because we found the car behaves quite differently and to be spring-loaded with chassis rotation and plenty of driftability, and then some, when we drove it on that quick Spanish road-racing course a year ago.
Final Word
Puzzling figure-eight performance aside, our official test results solidify what we already knew about the Aston Martin Vantage: It's a legit sports car/driver's car and an intriguing, enticing alternative to something like an upper-echelon 911 Carrera.
Speaking of which, remember that 911 GTS Hybrid we mentioned? We have something special cooking very, very soon between those two, so watch this site.