2015 Aston Martin V12 Vantage S: Pure Anger – XCAR

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Um aston martins are driven by a certain kind of person the ones that eschew showmanship chins and bright lights it’s a widely held belief that an aston driver will be let out of a junction that a porsche driver will be set up for days and aston martin is a special breed all about smoothness understated elegance and effortless performance it’s the thinking

Driver’s choice or at least that’s what everyone thinks and for the large part they are right but every family has a black sheep that uncle your dad looks at with a mix of admiration and abject terror well for the martin family it’s this the v12 vantage s and it’s about as understated as a brick to the face way back in 2009 aston martin released something

Truly mad its engineers threw its largest engine of 510 horsepower 6 litre v12 into its smallest car it was a nod to performance silliness and an example of what happens when you give engineers free reign it was very shouty but the s on this one’s ramp adds a megaphone under its bonnets it’s a 565 brake horsepower 457 pound foot 6 liter v12 north to 60

Happens in 3.7 seconds and its top speed is 205 miles an hour that makes it the fastest aston martin ever say for the limited run 177 hyper car and all of that power is packed into a car no bigger than a hatchback this is the holy grail of tiny car plus massive engine equals fun it’s the kind of car that kids dream of which is great because i’m basically a

Big kid the s is pretty different to the base v12 vantage we drove a while back yes it still has silly vents on its bonnet but i’d rather have those than a fire it’s lost the traditional aston grill in favor of a smaller carbon fiber doodad now that harks back to the stunning cc 100 concept released in 2013. then you have the three-stage adaptive damping

You’ve got three modes normal sport and track and that’s a first for the vantage as is its gearbox in the old v12 vantage you could have a six-speed manual but not anymore aston martin has put a seven-speed automatic in this one personally i’d prefer to have manual at least as an option but aston has decreed that’s not to be so there’s the brakes you can

Have black bits on the roof new black wheels and brakes bigger than most people’s heads the exhaust is derived from the 177 hyper car which means it’s noisier than pretty much everything in the world ever this is a car set up for anger fire for making noise and waking people up for telling people that yes you’ve bought an aston martin and if they don’t let

You out of a junction you’ll force your way out with all the power of hades and the power of hades it well and truly has this thing is an absolute animal it’s it’s just mad 565 horsepower firing out through the rear wheels it’s just maddening just how much thrust this thing has on a dry road in a straight line you will just fly you will fling yourself from

Corner to corner to the horizon again and again and again and again and again you get this wonderful noise just washing over the cabin from the v12 and that noise is um it’s a special one i’ll give it that it’s uh it’s one of the best car noises ever i think however we leave the noise and all that to one side for a moment let’s talk about the actual drive

Normal mode all well and good lovely comfy cruiser but press the sport button that sat on the dashboard and then the steering gets a little quicker the throttle response gets a little sharper everything just becomes noisier but you twin that with the fact that you don’t actually have to have the adaptive dampers set to any kind of backbreaking level so you

Can have a normally sprung car but with all the power and drama and noise that you want from something like this which is a master stroke you can then stick it into sport and it does firm up a little bit and you stick it into track and it firms up even further if you’re feeling a little brave but not super brave stick the traction into track mode and you

Get a little bit of slip and you can play with it and you feel the balance of the car and you work with the steering and it’s oh it’s just magical you can feel it through your fingertips everything about it just screams i’m an aston drive me as hard as you absolutely possibly can please make me work for my supper or petrol which by the way this goes through

At quite a rate but that’s not a surprise for a six liter v12 the engineers that put this together did an incredible job with pretty much everything and i say pretty much because there is one downside to this car but it’s a kind of minor caveat downside it is the gearbox it’s a robotized manual so essentially it takes the person out of the changing which

Is fine that’s very good this is the third iteration of this gearbox but i do wonder just what the first two iterations were like because when you’re in town and you’re waking up and the gearbox is waking up you’re in drive you’re going along all of a sudden it decides oh i want to change up a gear and this is that you drive through a patch of glue you sort

Of lurch forward a little bit and then when it hits two and a half three thousand rpm it goes oh we ought to change up again you lurch again and it’s just generally unpleasant and sometimes it just can’t make its mind up but this isn’t a car built for town yeah it’s going to start there going slowly and cruising about but this is a car built for your favorite

Road that one ribbon of tarmac that you know really really well that you can hone it down because then the gearbox just works especially with the sport button turned on it makes it more ferocious so it hangs onto the gears longer the change is sharper and angrier this is a car to drive in anger yeah it does have a little bit of trouble putting his power down

But i like the rawness to it i like the fact that it’s so angry and unfettered this is what aston martin is underneath the veneer underneath all the loveliness that you get all the gt cruisiness all the peppy sports car shizzle this oh it’s just a brilliant car yes the sport seats are uncomfortable yes the gearbox is janky around town but you get that noise

Cramming itself into your ears crawling under your skin you come alive with the car this becomes a driver and machine event driving this car in anger or driving this car just with everything turned to let’s have some fun aston martin has has let themselves go a little bit with this you do have to work with the car a little bit more to get it to go where you

Want it to go to get it to do what you want to do and when you think about it isn’t that what sports cars are all about there’s easy power which is brilliant don’t get me wrong love just being able to get in press the button and go but every now and then you want a car that’s going to push you that’s going to make you want to go that little bit faster work

That little bit harder because it makes your smile just that little bit bigger it doesn’t care about your ears or your personal space it wants to be free it wants to explore and scream its way through the world the v12 vantages is not a car to be taken lightly you can take it out on the road and have all kinds of fun then go to a track turn everything off

And slither a bank to your heart’s content but if you poke the angry bear just that little bit too hard and it doesn’t take all that much provocation well it’ll bite it is nothing short of a brilliant undiluted driving experience and yeah it may be the black sheep of the family but they always have the best stories you you

Transcribed from video
2015 Aston Martin V12 Vantage S: Pure Anger – XCAR By Carfection