Aston Martin Vantage S Review: Shaken, Not Stirred

There are faster cars than the Aston Martin Vantage S. There are more technically elaborate ones, too. Some will rearrange your internal organs more violently from a standing start and others will produce lap times sufficiently impressive to ruin a perfectly pleasant dinner conversation. But after a few kilometres in the Vantage S, none of that seems especially important. This is a sports car concerned less with numbers than with what happens in the space between your fingertips, the steering wheel and the road beneath you.

That distinction matters because modern performance cars have become extraordinarily good at being fast. Almost suspiciously good. Four-wheel drive, torque vectoring and enough computing power to run a modest Scandinavian country have made outrageous speed remarkably easy to access. The Vantage S goes in another direction. Aston Martin has taken an already very good Vantage and concentrated on making it feel more alert, more communicative and, crucially, more alive.

The S is about more than power

There is, naturally, more power. Under that enormous bonnet sits Aston Martin’s familiar 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8, now producing 500kW and 800Nm. It will dispatch 0-100km/h in 3.4 seconds and continue on to 325km/h, assuming you happen to own a runway, an Autobahn or have recently purchased a small sovereign state.

On paper, though, the increase over the standard Vantage is relatively modest. That is because the Vantage S is not really an exercise in turning up the boost and printing a new brochure.

Aston Martin has mounted the rear subframe directly to the body using aluminium rather than conventional rubber bushes, increasing torsional body stiffness and creating a more direct relationship between the rear axle and the rest of the chassis. The adaptive Bilstein dampers have been recalibrated, suspension geometry has been revised and the transmission mounting softened slightly to prevent all that additional stiffness turning the car into a beautifully upholstered wheelbarrow.

These are not particularly glamorous changes. Nobody has ever attracted a crowd at a petrol station by announcing that their rear spring aid stiffness has been reduced. But they matter enormously once the road begins to bend.

The Vantage S feels tauter than the standard car without becoming nervous. The front end reacts quickly, the rear follows faithfully and there is a reassuring sense that both axles are participating in the same conversation. It feels smaller than it is, which is some achievement when you consider there is a V8 sitting approximately somewhere in the next postcode ahead of you.

The steering deserves particular praise. Modern electrically assisted systems can often provide accuracy without much intimacy. Here, there is enough information coming back through the wheel to understand what the front tyres are doing without every piece of coarse bitumen being transmitted directly into your wrists. It makes the Vantage S wonderfully easy to place.

And then there is the way it looks… The basic proportions of the current Vantage were already excellent: absurdly long bonnet, cabin pushed rearward, broad shoulders and the sort of stance that suggests it has recently been barred from several respectable establishments. The S adds bonnet blades and a more pronounced rear spoiler, but thankfully Aston Martin has resisted transforming it into a collection of aerodynamic appendages. It still looks expensive rather than merely aggressive.

Inside, Aston Martin has finally caught up

The transformation inside is arguably just as important. Previous-generation Aston interiors had a curious habit of combining beautiful leather with infotainment technology apparently discovered during an archaeological dig at Mercedes-Benz. That problem has largely disappeared. The new cabin finally feels worthy of the body wrapped around it. Materials are rich, the architecture feels bespoke and, wonderfully, there are still physical controls for important functions.

This should not be revolutionary. Yet in an age when adjusting the temperature can require three menus, a software update and the patience of a hostage negotiator, proper buttons begin to feel like an act of rebellion.

The driving position is excellent and the cabin wraps tightly around you without becoming claustrophobic. There are still a few quirks. Some information displayed ahead of the driver is smaller than I would like, and Aston Martin remains fond of decorating interiors with enough trim combinations to occupy an entire afternoon with the configurator. But as a place to spend time, it now feels genuinely special.

Then you start the engine

Press the starter and the Vantage S immediately reminds you why large petrol engines continue to inspire behaviour that would be difficult to defend at a climate conference. The V8 catches with a deep, abrupt bark before settling into a bass-heavy idle. There is theatre here, but not pantomime. It sounds expensive, mechanical and faintly antisocial.

On the road, the sheer quantity of performance is initially what dominates. Eight hundred Newton metres arrives across a broad section of the rev range, and the Vantage gathers speed with the sort of relentless force that makes overtaking opportunities disappear almost before you have consciously registered them. Yet the throttle calibration is good enough that it never feels clumsy.

That is important. There is a difference between a powerful car and a car that simply dumps its entire output onto the rear tyres whenever you sneeze near the accelerator. The Vantage S gives you room to meter out the performance, making all that power feel exploitable rather than ornamental.

The eight-speed automatic works well with it. Changes are quick and decisive when you ask for them, but it does not spend normal road driving behaving as though qualifying for Le Mans begins in nine minutes.

Start pushing harder and the chassis becomes the real attraction. There is strong front-end grip and excellent composure through faster corners, while the rear remains adjustable enough to remind you that this is still a front-engined, rear-wheel-drive Aston Martin rather than a high-speed computer simulation.

You can feel the car settle beneath you under load. Small corrections are answered immediately. Power can be introduced progressively on corner exit and, as confidence builds, the Vantage S begins to reveal that rare quality possessed by the best sports cars: it encourages you to participate.

The electronics are there, of course, and given the performance available that is probably wise. But they operate discreetly. You are aware of their competence rather than their interference. It never feels as though a committee in Gaydon is driving the car on your behalf.

It is still an Aston Martin

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the Vantage S is that none of this newfound precision has stripped away its character. That can happen. Engineers chase lap time, add stiffness, sharpen responses and eventually emerge from the Nürburgring with something devastatingly capable that possesses roughly the emotional range of a photocopier.

The Aston avoids that trap… It still feels luxurious. It still feels slightly indulgent. And it still understands that most owners will spend considerably more time on public roads than attacking kerbs at Silverstone. The ride is firm, naturally, but there is sufficient compliance to use the car properly. There are no rear seats, luggage space requires a little forward planning and visibility is what you might politely describe as sports-car appropriate.

What matters is that the Vantage can crawl through traffic without throwing a tantrum, cover distance comfortably and then become something dramatically more serious when the road clears.

In that sense, it remains recognisably Aston Martin. A Porsche 911 remains perhaps the more ruthlessly complete answer to the sports-car question. It is devastatingly accomplished, beautifully engineered and capable of making extraordinary performance feel strangely routine. The Vantage S is less interested in routine. There is more ceremony to it. More noise. More visual drama. More sense that you have made a slightly unreasonable decision and are going to enjoy defending it. And I like that.

Verdict

The Vantage S succeeds because Aston Martin has understood that the standard Vantage did not require reinvention. It required refinement. The extra power is welcome, but almost secondary. The meaningful improvements are found in the steering, the chassis response and the way the rear of the car now feels more closely connected to everything happening ahead of it.

The result is not some uncompromising track refugee wearing number plates. It is a better Vantage.

Sharper, certainly, but also more coherent. It feels expensive without feeling precious, sophisticated without becoming clinical and enormously fast without allowing speed to become its only personality trait. That combination is becoming increasingly rare.

Performance cars are now capable of extraordinary things, but extraordinary capability and genuine desirability are not necessarily the same thing. The Vantage S understands the difference. It makes you look back when you park it. It makes you take the longer road home. And when you finally switch it off, there is a good chance you will sit there for a few seconds listening to the metal cool before deciding you could probably find an excuse to go somewhere else.

For a sports car, there are considerably worse measures of success. James Bond would approve: shaken, not stirred.