The Aston Martin Vantage Roadster Is Here, And It’s A Looker

It’s been a bit nippy in Britain of late, which is perhaps why the folks in Gaydon have decided to get us all dreaming about warmer days with the new Aston Martin Vantage Roadster.

Yep, like clockwork, the roofless version of the thoroughly revised Vantage has arrived a year or so after the coupe, a car we boldly claimed might be the best Aston ever and which made it to the final three in our 2024 Car of the Year innings.

The Roadster doesn’t offer many surprises. Up front is the same Mercedes-AMG-sourced 4.0-litre twin-turbo which Aston has treated to new turbos, tweaked cam profiles and a different compression ratio, like a dash of Worcestershire sauce on a bratwurst.

Still sending 656bhp and 590lb ft of torque to the back wheels via an eight-speed auto, the slightly heavier and less aero-friendly Roadster doesn’t want much for performance over the coupe: 0-62mph drops from 3.4 to 3.5 seconds, and top speed from 205 to a still haircut-ruining 202mph.

Those barely noticeable drops are largely because Aston’s worked hard to stop all the convertible gubbins from impacting the weight too much. As a result, the Roadster weighs 1665kg dry – only 60kg more than the Coupe.

It’s done this by engineering a simpler ‘Z-fold’ mechanism for the fabric roof, which is lighter in itself than the more common ‘K-fold’ and eliminates the need for a tonneau cover. AM has also modified the way the body is mounted to the chassis at the rear and added extra lateral strengthening to stop the Roadster from becoming a comparatively floppy mess.

A new word has been invented for the way the aluminium rollover protection is manufactured: ‘castrusion’. This isn’t some painful and deeply private medical procedure, but a combination of casting and extrusion, all of which are good for lightness. Apparently. What little increase there is in weight has been countered by some fine-tuning of the rear damper calibration and gearbox mounting.

What about the Important Convertible Stuff? Well, the roof can be raised or lowered at up to 31mph, and takes just 6.8 seconds in either direction, which Aston says is the fastest automatic convertible roof on the market, and is incidentally the 0-62mph time of a 2.0-litre Mazda MX-5 RF. What a weird race that would be. The roof also has eight layers of insulation, apparently keeping cabin noise levels comparable to the coupe. With the roof up, obviously. It’ll be really loud with it down.

All the other highlights of the coupe are un-messed-about-with: the fancy rear e-diff, Bilstein DTX adjustable dampers, hugely complicated eight-stage traction control, and the overhauled interior that represents arguably the most significant change of all over the old car.

Aston hasn’t announced pricing, but expect a decent hike over the £165,000-odd entry point of the coupe. Deliveries are set to begin in the second quarter of 2025, so just in time for you to get the top down and put all that extra spending to good use. Unless you live in the southern hemisphere. Or Britain, where it’ll probably be raining.