New Aston Martin Vantage Roadster 2025 review: fast, exciting and beautiful

Verdict

Aston Martin’s rise towards greatness continues at pace with the Roadster version of its brilliant new Vantage. It’s as fast and exciting as it is beautiful, with a much improved cabin to match. Only the hard ride lets it down – although the flip side is a level of handling sharpness most rivals can’t compete with. Plus the noise it makes is something else.

The latest Aston Martin Vantage is a fearsome sports car. Think of it as Britain’s answer to a Porsche 911 Turbo, with more panache but little less performance, and you get the picture. 

Well now Aston has gone one better by removing its roof to give us this, the Aston Martin Vantage Roadster, boasting even more style, not an ounce less performance, and more reasons than ever to go wobbly at the knees.

It's not cheap at £175,000 before options, and its 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 engine makes only the thinnest of attempts to be ecologically responsible. But in this part of the market, does that even matter? Certainly not Aston Martin’s customers, who might otherwise be considering rivals such as the Ferrari Roma Spider, Mercedes-AMG SL, Lamborghini Huracan Spyder and the aforementioned 911 Turbo Cabriolet.

Used - available now

2023 Aston Martin

Vantage

11,414 milesAutomaticPetrol4.0L

Cash £115,000

View Vantage

2023 Aston Martin

Vantage

16,108 milesAutomaticPetrol4.0L

Cash £74,995

View Vantage

These are big hitting rivals with huge performance, desirability and luxury – yet the Vantage either matches or trumps most of them on paper. And in the flesh – to these eyes at least – it blows all of them into next week. Inside and out, it really is a breathtakingly lovely-looking car, even if its hind quarters do look a touch congested compared with a Roma Spider.

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Its hood is also the fastest in the world, claims Aston, taking just 6.8 seconds to open or close, which it can do at the press of a button at speeds of up to 31mph. The wind deflector behind the seats is fixed, however, so unlike some rivals you can’t opt for a hood up/deflector down set up. Roof down refinement is excellent up to 70mph and beyond, and with the top up it feels almost like a coupe.

Mechanically, the Roadster is exactly the same as the hard top, except for one tiny factor. Its eight-speed ZF gearbox has fractionally softer mountings to smooth out its machinations on the move. This means you get the same 656bhp and monstrous 800Nm from the twin-turbo V8, still AMG-sourced but heavily worked upon by Aston both inside and out to give it a bespoke nature. Given that it weighs a mere 60kg more than the coupe (1,805kg on the EU scale) it’s no surprise to find performance is still outrageous.

Aston claims 0-62mph in just 3.5 seconds – seriously impressive for a rear wheel-drive car – with the same 202mph top speed. With the hood down the Roadster’s weight distribution is 49:51 but with it up that switches to a theoretically perfect 50:50: the same as the coupe.

Inside, the Roadster benefits from almost the same gorgeous cabin and fine driving position as its sibling, with the ergonomics and infotainment both hugely improved compared with its predecessor. Except in this case Aston has listened to its critics and increased the font sizes for the digitised instruments, making them far easier to read than in the new coupe. All new Vantages can have these dials retro fitted via a software update, if desired.

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There’s a small area for luggage behind the Aston’s front seats – the Vantage is a strict two-seater, unlike the Roma or 911 – while the boot has shrunk to 200 litres, but is still bigger than most rivals. The fuel tank is unchanged at 78 litres, giving a theoretical touring range of 395 miles at 23.0mpg combined.

On the move, the Roadster feels instantly alert and very rapid indeed, no matter which of its five drive modes you select out of Wet, Sport, Sport Plus, Track and Individual. Its ride is firm, bordering on stiff on rougher surfaces like those you’d find more readily back here in the UK, the launch event having taken place on the mostly glass-smooth Alpine roads of Austria. 

To begin with you can easily think it too aggressive in set-up and feel, especially given how meaty the steering weight is and how loud and responsive it is seemingly in any gear, at almost any speed. 

Rival manufacturers tend to make their convertibles softer than their equivalent coupes; Ferrari, for example, has softened the rear end of the Roma Spider by 10 per cent to make it more relaxed than the coupe. But Aston deliberately chose not to go this route, wanting instead to make the Roadster drive and feel exactly like the coupe but with the added appeal of being able to drive with the top down.

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Does that idea work? Yes if you want your Roadster to feel like an open top version of the sharp-driving B-road weapon than is the standard Vantage. No, if you want instead to waft around with the wind in your hair, without all the feedback and pent-up responses of a full-blown sports car. 

Some will love it for its ‘come on then if you think you’re hard enough’ approach, while others might find it a touch wearing after a while, especially on rougher roads where the stiff rear suspension struggles sometimes to settle into a rhythm.

There’s no doubting the performance. In Sport Plus mode the throttle map, gearbox and electronic differential are all turned up a notch and ensure the Roadster feels even more crazed and more exciting than it already does in the lesser Sport setting. And in Track it goes up a level again, with an increase in exhaust sounds to match. Plus there’s the same eight-stage switchable traction control as in the coupe for punters who want to take their cars to the limit on a track.

And right there, perhaps, is the Roadster’s Achilles Heel. It is, if anything, a bit too full on in its demeanour for a convertible – and maybe not quite soothing enough in its ride for the kind of customers Aston Martin has traditionally sold open-top cars to in the past. 

It makes a very deliberate point of not being just another boulevard cruiser, but in doing so it might well go too far – at least for some. For others it will be a blast of fresh air (literally) up both nostrils, with a monstrous V8 soundtrack to match.