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| Road Test: Aston Martin V8 Vantage (2005-) |
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| Exotic Sports |
by: Andrew Frankel |
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Click for V8 Vantage Gallery
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| PERFORMANCE RATING: |
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The V8 Vantage is powered by a 4.3-litre V8 engine developing 380bhp and capable of catapulting its exquisite rump down the road at 175mph. On the way it will hit 60mph in 4.8sec and run the risk of inducing heart failure in its driver, so thrilling is the manner in which this performance is delivered.
The engine is actually loosely based on the V8 unit used by Jaguar but by the time Aston Martin’s engineers were finished with it, it retained no more than its basic architecture. When you start the car – by pushing a button of course – it sounds pleasant enough but gives no hint of what’s to come. But when you nail the throttle and watch the backwards-sweeping rev-counter swing past 4000rpm, something quite extraordinary happens. In an instant, it appears as if you’ve been rear-ended by a thoroughbred race car, for not only does the Vantage suddenly bolt for the horizon, it does so accompanied by a howl so sharp and sweet it’s only possible rival for the best sounding engine on earth award is the V8 used by Ferrari’s considerably more expensive F430.
Aston has chosen to fit the Vantage with a conventional six-speed manual gearbox and those lamenting the steering-wheel paddles available in either the DB9 or Vanquish should drive the Vantage first before ripping up their order papers. It would be hard to imagine a more sweet-shifting change or how the car could be improved by any other kind of transmission.
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Introduction Think of the new Aston Martin V8 Vantage as a kind of DB9-lite ... |
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