**Aston Martin Vantage: A Masterclass in Multitasking**

The Aston Martin Vantage is a car that embodies the perfect blend of performance, practicality, and style. It's a car that can effortlessly switch between being a comfortable long-distance cruiser to a razor-sharp track monster, making it an ideal choice for drivers who crave versatility and excitement.

**Approachable yet Brutish**

The Vantage is not a car that scares easily, despite its formidable 500 horsepower rear-wheel drive setup. In fact, our test drive showed that it's surprisingly approachable, with a supportive chassis that lets the driver feel connected to the road at all times. The car's brutish credentials are still evident, however - as we discovered on the track, this is a car that can be pushed hard and will respond eagerly to every input from the driver.

**Comfort and Practicality**

One of the standout features of the Vantage is its ability to balance comfort and practicality. It boasts a decent-sized boot with plenty of space for luggage, making it an ideal choice for long road trips or family outings. And yet, even with all this space available, the car still feels at home on the track, where it can unleash its full fury on unsuspecting corners.

**The 'Brutus' Factor**

One aspect of the Vantage that's particularly noteworthy is its "Brutus" factor - a term coined by the Aston Martin team to describe the car's rugged, no-nonsense approach to driving. On the road, this manifests as a more aggressive and engaging driving experience, with a pronounced sense of weight transfer and traction that makes every drive feel like an adventure. And yet, even on the track, where we encountered some particularly demanding corners, the Vantage felt surprisingly composed and predictable.

**The Soundtrack**

One of the most impressive aspects of the Vantage is its soundtrack - a symphony of exhaust notes, engine thrum, and road noise that's simply sublime. Whether cruising down the highway or carving up a twisty mountain road, the Vantage's soundscape is always engaging and entertaining, making every drive feel like an immersive experience.

**Multi-Role Mastery**

The Vantage's multi-role nature is perhaps its greatest strength - it's a car that excels at everything from long-distance cruising to track day thrills. And yet, despite this broad appeal, the Vantage remains surprisingly specific in its character, making it clear that Aston Martin has deliberately aimed for a more niche audience with this model.

**Pricing and Options**

The Vantage is not an inexpensive car, however - starting at around £120,000, plus additional options that can easily push the price up to £200,000 or more. And yet, considering the level of performance, practicality, and style on offer, it's hard to argue with the value proposition.

**Brakes and Performance**

The Vantage comes equipped with steel brakes on the road, which are more than adequate for everyday driving duties. However, Aston Martin is also offering carbon ceramic brakes as an option, which promise even better stopping power and handling capabilities - a significant upgrade that's sure to appeal to serious track enthusiasts.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, the Aston Martin Vantage is a car that truly has it all - performance, practicality, style, and a healthy dose of bravado. Whether you're cruising down the highway or carving up a mountain road, this car is always up for the challenge, making it an ideal choice for drivers who crave excitement, adventure, and a sense of freedom on four wheels.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enlike playing a musical instrument I love it so childish but brilliant hey guys and welcome to petrol ped and welcome to the all-new Aston Martin Vantage now thanks to the guys at Aston Martin Chester this is actually the third time I've been able to shoot a video with this car and unusually for me normally I get to drive high-performance cars or supercars on the road and always wonder what they would be like on track with Vantage I went to the launch event Aston Martin Chester did and then about a month ago now I drove this car on track at Silverstone and experienced what it's like at the very edge and it is a superb car on track but I've been desperate to get it out on the road and drive it in if you're like normal driving conditions so this cars mine for the next few hours so I thought before we take it out for a drive we'll have a look round it and and have a bit of a chat about this car there are things people love about this car there are things that are maybe a bit divided opinion and but let's have a good look round the outside and then we will take it up the road for a spin because this car is absolutely stunning on the road it makes her an amazing noise so if we're gonna start to have a look round the car we should probably start at the front because maybe this is the most controversial aspect of the car it has this lovely kind of almost sharp like look to it massive great big air intake there for the engine we'll talk more about what's under the bonnet in a moment but maybe the most controversial bit are these lights and I know lots of comments I've had on the two videos have done so far and Vantage people aren't sure about the lights maybe they're too small I actually they've grown on me a great deal and I know they are unasked and like but you've got to grow the design language and when I was up again and recently what I found really really interesting they had DB eleven the new Vantage in the new DBS Superleggera all pot next to each other in the atrium and you can see this evolution of the design language so I know that they are going to be a debatable thing but I quite like that in a car when a car causes that that debate that clash that that sort of love-hate relationship I think that's great but for me I really like the front end of the car it took a little bit of time to grow on me but it just has this kind of purposeful and I love the sharp like nature of it too so we've started with the front the other thing to note by the way the front end of that car if you've seen Spectre the James Bond film the the link between this car and db10 so Sam Mendes the producer of that film was at Gaede and saw some of the concept design sketches for Vantage fell in love with it and that's really the thing that inspired db10 that's why these two cars look so similar but as we walk round the side of the car what I really like as well as this sculpting around the the the wheel arch to let that high-pressure out the wheel arch it comes down the side of the car really lovely haunches on the side and then you get to the back and for me the back of this car is just epic so let's have a bit of a chat there is however one thing I don't like about the rear of the Vantage so what's not to like about the rear of this car I've got this lovely kind of line of LED lights that look brilliant in the dark when you're following one of these and under braking on a circuit and you've got all the kind of diffuser work under there lovely the thing I don't like and you can fix it but this car it has the standard exhaust and I'm sorry Afton but that asked that's just not a big enough exhaust pipe it just doesn't quite look right it sounds brilliant it just doesn't look right there is a two pipe or quad tailpipe option and if I was specking one of these I would almost certainly go for that because I just think it makes the rear of the car look that much better but but that's me being really picky exhaust is too small rest of the car it's wicked now this is a sports car but it has a pretty decent sized boot and Aston Martin say you can get a set of golf clubs in it so I reckon we should give it a try and I have to say well with the exception of my driver you could easily get a set of golf clubs in there and then you would probably just put the driver on the angle or maybe just don't take your driver with you but you can get a set of golf clubs in there nearly actually the fix to the golf club driver dilemma is this actually really useful parcel shelf so you can obviously fill the boot space here or you can put stuff there or you can just drop it forward and there we go let's me driver in the in the car absolutely no problem whatsoever so I think you'll agree the boot is a good space but finally let's have a bit of a chat about maybe the final controversial thing about what's under the bonnet and that's the fact that it's an AMG v8 under the bonnet four litre twin-turbocharged v8 source from AMG but it is running Aston Martin software so it is an Aston Martin engine but obviously it's just coming from AMG it produces 503 bhp 506 foot-pounds of torque and the performance figures of the car nor 260 3.6 seconds top-end 195 miles an hour and certainly from my experience in driving the car it is an absolute gem of an engine very responsive loads of talk lots of kind of drivability and the soundtrack that you get once that noise comes through the engine through the exhaust and out the back of the car is something else so let's pop inside the car have a chat about a stunning interior before we take this car up the road for a drive it's the bit I'm always really excited by now that you've always got a love and asked in interior and I think the Vantage interior is very different from what's come before for some people maybe a tad complex but there's some really interesting stuff in here so first thing that's gone is the emotion control unit so you get a standard keyless entry key you don't have the kind of plug-in key which I think's a bit of a shame because I used to quite like the emotion control unit so you just got basically an array of little buttons here engine start/stop at the top and then you've got Park ride part reverse neutral and drive so you a standard automatic box you can drive on the paddles and I'll talk more about that when we get out on the road you've then got quite a lot of different buttons here so the MMI in this car is derived from daimler-benz it's the same as you would find in DB 11 and so you've got a screen there it's not touchscreen so you control it by this little paddle arrangement here and then there's lots of the kind of buttons that you would need on an everyday basis just there so everything from kind of turning things like traction control off switching between nav and radio and so on it's all done with buttons just there and then you've got this other little array here which for me I don't know there's there's a whole bunch of drivers that will like touch screen we live in a touchscreen world now with things our Apple and Android phones all being touchscreen but there is something tactile about having a proper button I think that's just the main thing you'd have to think about is there's so many there when you're driving maybe especially at night time how easy it is to kind of locate the right button that you need steering wheel is lovely got that kind of square 177 inspired steering wheel really nice view out of the cop but you are sattva reloj in this car I found when I was driving it on track one of the things certainly finding the apex on that side of the car was a little bit tricky because you're kind of doing this all the time but the the driving position you kind of sit into the car and and you're kind of surrounded in this lovely cocoon now one of the things I mentioned on the DBS launch was DBS Superleggera has exactly the same air vents as Vantage and on first inspection you look at those new think I don't know whether I like those so much they kind of don't quite sit there however they do a really good job and they're really quick and easy to use so I kind of half understand those now I do still think maybe they could have been a little bit nicer but the rest of this cabin this cars been SPECT beautifully with my recent trip up to gayden to kind of see how all of this is made their headliner in this car is beautiful you get that lovely access to the little parcel shelf at the back pretty good rear visibility so a very lovely place to be so I think it would be rude not to the next thing we need to do is start this car and just have a listen to the engine oh yes so beautiful inside and out I think you'll agree one final thing if you ever drove the old Vantage it used to have a handbrake here which is always a bit weird and obviously we kind of got all the controls in the center and I something in where's the handbrake it's an electronic handbrake now rather than the old fly off handbrake but it's just there so if you have advantage you want to know where the handbrake is it's there but it's about time we take this car out on the road because I just want to get driving so I think we take it to some of my favorite roads this should be good fun so here we are guys out on the road in the brand-new Aston Martin Vantage now sadly I don't have this car for a huge amount of time so I'm gonna do my very best to sort of talk through what in essence is actually a fairly complex car to really get your head around first things first from a drivetrain point of view and it's got an 8-speed ZF box you can drive it in fully automatic to sticking indeed and off you go and I guess if you were off to the South of France and you wanted to kind of cruise you would probably do that having said that for me it's straight onto the paddles although it's not a dual clutch box the gear change on the paddles is pretty sharp it's not as sharp or something like a Porsche PDK but it is very very good and there's not too much hesitation that I really like second thing is we've got three settings for the suspension of three settings for the throttle and those types of things so suspension wise you got normal air support Plus and track the normal is very compliant spotless actually isn't too bad you select it just burns it up a little bit and actually for me on a day-to-day basis that's the setting I would probably have this car in the track mode it's called track for a reason I think certainly on British roads I wouldn't drive it on that on the road but when I had this and Silverstone on the track we clearly had it in that setting and it's very sharp firm things up really nicely on the other side of the steering wheel local Sport Sport+ and track now the important thing here is as well as doing things like sharpening up the throttle that starts to have a a bit of an impact on what happens at the rear end of the car with that lovely exhaust note now interestingly this car isn't fitted with the sports exhaust which I understand is a little bit louder but to be honest this is loud enough so when you're in sport mode you've got a grumbly v8 you've got lots of menacing noise is coming from bit underneath the bonnet but it needs not a hooligan and again I can imagine many Vantage owners on a day-to-day basis you'd stick it into that mode when you put it into Sport Plus however you start to get a little bit of the the Menace come you start to get a few pops and cracks on overrun and you start to be able to hear those delicious kind of noises when you put it in track however and it just turns into an absolute weapon of a car and you can really play on the throttle on and off and you can create cracks and pops on upshift and downshift and it is properly properly raucous again I think you would probably bought one oh I see I wouldn't bore of that at all but a lot of people would probably bore of that not driving in that mode too often but for me I've got this car for such a short period of time I'm going to be driving in that quite a lot a bit so interesting drive mode in this car so let's drop it into the Sport Plus mode from the steering wheel I've got a little bit more response interestingly when this car is ticking over and you change it from sport to sport plus you can hear the valve in the earth exhaust open and you can hear the engine tone change I just drop it down a couple of yeah so you get that you get that instant engagement that instant noise this engine and again you know we did a bit of a chat about the NT when I had the bonnet lifted a few people have come on a set or Aston Martin with an AMG engine in look AMG make one of the best v8 in the world why not use it you know the traction point of view it's hugely hugely impressive the big thing you do have to worry about with this car though is the speedo it moves so quickly and you've got this auditory pleasure coming now one of the things I miss down when I drove this car on track was the noise because I had a crush on me and you just call there anything cook when you drive in this car with our crash helmet on even with the windows up it makes a brilliant noise adjuster here we go into third into second lovely lovely sharp pointy front end lots of peril the accident lots of power on the exit very confidence-inspiring this car the suspension so nice and compliant the front end is excellent and even though kind of driving speeds that are acceptable on UK roads it gives a huge amount of engagement the gearbox is sharp and precise DMA yeah I knew this car would be really good on the road with her matrac the things you ask him a car are just so much beyond most cars comfort zone you're accelerating hard you've got lots of forces going through the suspension the brakes are asked to do a lot because you're braking from such high speeds and you really kind of if a car is gonna have weaknesses you really find them out on track you then have to time dial it back a little bit for the road this car was by no means disappointing on track whatsoever but you kind of get it on the road and it's so much more capable than you're ever gonna need on the road you can really drive it and know that you're well within the bounds of the car well within its capabilities well Sport Plus is a good fun however in the short time I have with the car let's engage manic mode first of all you get a much more throttle response you get a really Karla feels really up for it I'm gonna just turn to the window down a tad and hopefully there you go you get these delicious cracks on upshift you get a big kind of overrun of purples and Bankson oh wow Aston Martin you know the old Mantid I love the old Vantage I was really privileged I drove the v12 Vantage S the Roadster version but I drove it awake all day it was pretty scary to be honest and then little bit of traction control helping me out there when deep up he gets a burden for and you have to back off yeah the old man teaches was a pretty brutish car the v12 one had lots at all lots of horsepower and they hadn't did scare me a little bit this this is a really approachable car it's fast it's got over 500 horsepower and your new rear wheel drive you got all the engagement but it's not frightening me it's just so supportive to the driver and I really like that I think it just makes it a really approachable car for lots and lots of drivers and it's this kind of multitasking car that I like so that he would have a pretty decent sized boot if you put a lot of stuff in there we've seen that already you could pack it full of stuff you could take it on a long cruise so it's got that mix between GT Cruiser and you know sticking it in Drive and just driving it all the sport mode and the comfort modes and you do that when you gotta go on the holidays and then you drive all the way to the South of France you don't need a boom of your stuff you drive it to Paul Ricard sticking in track mode and absolutely smash the circuit if I think that multi-role is it's been done brilliantly vast and not oh man it's really interesting this cars the kind of car you would want to be more seat time just to really understand where his limits are but when you jump straight in it it's very welcoming and and really helps you out but it needs got an element of Brutus and and the kind of ruggedness that you really want in a sports car and on the road is certainly for me the most sports car feeling Aston Martin are driven and I've been lucky I've driven driven quite a few certainly they're recent ones and it's just got that new genus now does it have the edginess to compare it to something like a 911 I've driven a lot of 911 anything so I wouldn't want to upset the kind of Porsche fan boys out there and start saying whether it's better or worse it's different but it's that kind of market that this car is eight that these cars starts at about one hundred and twenty thousand quid a flip engine already you you're not gonna bother these rims are twenty thousand pounds not by the time you start to spec if this cars being beautiful expect as well but when you start chucking it about you come into corners start making noise it's gr so pointy and squirty now one of the things when I had this car on track it's got steel brakes on the road those steel brakes are ample amazing stopping power when I had the car on track they just started to feel wanting just at the end when we've had a few laps and you're braking from very high speed I have it on good authority however that carbon ceramic brakes as an option are coming to Vantage and very soon and on the road these Steel's are just they're just they do the job they're brilliant and when you get out it's just going come on baby yeah man I think this cars really clever I think it will appeal to a very wide range of potential buyers for ustin Martin it's got the kind of the long-legged GT characteristics that you might want from an Aston for long road trips and plenty of luggage space in the back but it's got this sporty nature that's just delicious and his built-in soundtrack my goodness me you just drive this car on a daily basis with the biggest smile on your face ever and when you get to a corner and you can just drop it down a gear and you can put a sharp sharp nose into a corner here's a wicked thing so I have to say a huge thank you to James at Aston Martin Chichester both heading we play with his new demonstrator this car is a demonstrator in at all and that's the drive it make sure you mention my name of course but it's just brilliant listing a year massive thanks to James I wanted to drive this car for a long time and it's not disappointed it's just brilliant and I hope you've enjoyed that up though if you have done so give me a thumbs up comments below are always welcome and if you haven't done so already please subscribe to petrol petrol plenty more content to come and from the driver's seat of the new Aston Martin Vantage I'll see you on the next build guys you take care drive safe sadly and have to return this car but one might just have it just put off an hour or so just a little bit more just listen to that let's go why do I have to take it back I don't want to take you back I want to carry on driving it all day anyway you take care guys\n"