The Aston Martin Vantage Roadster Drives Like the Coupe, Mostly: Review

We’re big fans of the new Aston Martin Vantage. It made it to the very last rounds of our inaugural Cool Car Cup last year, only to be beaten out by the 1,001 horsepower V-12 hybrid lunatic that is the Lamborghini Revuelto. I voted for the Vantage; it’s a driver’s supercar that threatens to drift on command but also precisely carves up a canyon road. It’s brutish, beautiful, and well-calibrated.

Now, a year into production, Aston Martin removed the Vantage’s tin top and made a Roadster—not a Volante, a term reserved for its luxurious GTs like the DB12 and Vanquish—just a Roadster. It has the same spec sheet as the coupe: 656 horsepower and 590 pound-feet from an AMG-derived twin-turbo V-8, rear-mounted eight-speed ZF automatic transmission, and a bonded aluminum chassis. It’s just one-tenth of a second slower to 60 miles per hour, and it weighs 132 pounds more.

All Aston has to do is make it drive like the coupe. Which, according to Aston Martin, wasn’t all that difficult.

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

The primary difficulty with removing the roof of any car is rigidity; the vehicle’s resistance to bending in various directions. Cars twist in an incredible array of ways, and a car that is extremely rigid on paper might have localized structural weaknesses—stuff like a flexible control arm bracket or a weak strut tower. Without proper structure, odd things happen to the handling and ride quality. A telltale sign of a flexy structure is body-on-frame jiggles and heavy suspension loads.

Simon Newton, the same engineer who headed up the Vantage coupe, handled the Roadster—and he has interesting ideas about rigidity. When the new Vantage coupe launched, he didn’t chase any headline rigidity numbers or percentage increases. Instead, he proudly described stiffening the front firewall to improve steering response and front-end grip, and described the importance of detailed reinforcement rather than an overall number. Thus, the Vantage Roadster, thanks to its bonded aluminum structure and a reinforced rear suspension structure, has “largely the same rigidity” as the coupe.

The Vantage team also specced slightly different transmission mounts, specific to the Roadster, for better ride quality and drivetrain response. Most fascinating is what stayed the same: The springs, dampers, adaptive damper calibration, and the array of sensors and controllers in the Bosch 6D-IMU all retain the same state of tune. Newton says this is a testament to how rigid the Roadster’s platform is, because “those systems are highly sensitive to even the smallest changes in vehicle performance.”

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

Pros: Drives Just Like The Coupe, Fast Roof Mechanism, Quiet With The Top Up

Aston completed the housekeeping with updated gauge cluster and infotainment artwork (including a single button to turn off all driver’s assist systems), addressing former complaints about illegibility. Completing the Vantage Roadster’s mechanical package is a Z-fold, eight-layer cloth roof that opens or closes in 6.8 seconds, something I tested immediately.

With the top down, a loop around California’s finest desert backroads, and a 2000’s-era Great Recession music playlist, I sank deep into a pool of “Vantaging”—a verb similar to “Summering.” The Roadster does indeed feel like the coupe, just without a roof. Ride quality is decent, if sporty, with a bit of the Coupe’s rear damper stiffness still present. Compound bumps pack the rear suspension, but it figures itself out fairly quickly. Sharp cracks and edges don’t shock the body, and it remains steadfastly rigid—no cowl shake here.

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

The Vantage’s exhaust, which sounds distinctly different from any AMG V-8, is even more present—and lovely. Who could have imagined that less roof makes for an even better sound?

On the highway, the top-down aero is a little lacking. While the overall fatigue from the wind is low, it’s just a noisy place to be. With a passenger at highway speeds, it was difficult to talk at a normal volume, though that’s without a wind deflector. Even at higher speeds, the air doesn’t entirely redirect over the top of the Vantage well. But slowed to backroad speeds, all sins are forgiven.

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

Cons: Noisy With The Top Down, Probably Pricey

Dynamically, the Roadster is identical to the coupe, down to the nuances. The little rear wiggles it does under power, the glued front axle, and the lovely brake feel all remain. Only over the harshest bumps while cornering expose any sort of cowl shake, but just for a moment, and don’t present any odd cornering behaviors.

It is a gorgeously sorted Roadster. You could copy-paste my coupe review and it would be accurate, just with added droptop dopamine. With the top up, it’s effectively as quiet as the coupe, save for some slightly unacceptable wind leaks around the A-pillar.

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

The only snag is price—it will be expensive, like the coupe. And the price isn’t even known as of publishing, thanks to tariffs upending the world trade order. But, I almost don’t need to know the price when Vantage coupes easily crest into the high $200,000 mark, and the Roadster is always more expensive than the coupe.

Aston pulled a neat trick here. It’s like Boxster versus Cayman. All you have to do is choose your flavor and enjoy the rest.

Competitors

Ferrari Roma
Lamborghini Temerario
Porsche 911 Turbo

The Aston Martin Vantage Will Go Down As One of the Greats: Video Review
Aston Martin Finally Fixed the DBX: First Drive Review

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