With a row of cars lined up and the Palm Springs desert serving as their backdrop, Aston Martin’s Executive Vice President and Chief Creative Officer, Marek Reichman, begins his walk-around. A designer by trade, Reichman moves quickly around the Vantage Roadster parked at the edge of the lot. He highlights its various creases and curves, his words swiftly painting the vision he and the brand’s design team had for it. His tone, however, says something else.
It’s normal for automakers to work in a bit of fluff when presenting a new car, but Reichman’s remarks are brief and to the point. He’s not trying to convince us that the vehicle that a dozen other writers and I are about to drive for the first time is a good-looking machine. His tone conveys a sense of certainty, as if to say: “This car is stunning. I know it, and so do you.”
It’s a similar story as Simon Newton, Aston’s Director of Vehicle Performance, breaks down the roadster’s mechanicals. Newton explains that, by developing it alongside the coupe, he and his team could implement targeted solutions to ensure its torsional rigidity from the beginning. As such, the convertible gets away by being just 132 pounds heavier than the coupe, added structural components and folding top included.
From there, Newton’s presentation wraps up in a few minutes. Like the coupe, the Aston Martin Vantage Roadster develops 656 horsepower from a 4.0-liter V8. It rides on the same suspension setup, including Bilstein’s DTX adaptive dampers; the only difference is a retune to account for the convertible’s added weight in the rear. And while its 3.6-second time to 60 mph is a tenth slower than the coupe’s, it tops at 202 mph just the same. “Well, it drives just like the coupe,” Newton concludes. And as I walk out to my assigned car, that’s a prospect worth getting excited about.
Not long ago, Aston Martin sang a completely different tune. Since 2015, no less than four CEO’s have called Gaydon home, with Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll taking ownership and joining as Executive Chairman in 2020. At the time, the carmaker had a lineup with plenty of visual appeal, but one that didn’t deliver a world-beating driving experience or offer the latest tech.
The turning point came in 2023 with the arrival of the DB12. This grand tourer didn’t just re-establish the British brand as competitive, but propelled it to the top of the ultra-luxury food chain. The DB12 Volante, the refreshed DBX 707, and the Vantage coupe carried the torch, each making similar leaps in terms of performance and appeal.
On the move, I join the highway heading west out of Palm Springs with Idyllwild’s woodsy winding mountain roads as my destination. While the Aston Martin Vantage Roadster proudly wears the sports car title, it’s a stellar grand tourer. Its cloth top opens or stows in 6.8 seconds at up to 31 mph, meaning it’s rapid. More importantly, its hushed cabin confirms Aston’s claims of matching the coupe’s noise and vibration levels at highway speeds.
Given its sports car positioning, the Vantage doesn’t offer a softer Comfort setting for high-speed cruising. Instead, it starts in Sport, moving to Sport+ and Track, with Wet and Individual serving as alternates. However, as you’ll learn later, this car’s stiff structure doesn’t have to lean on overly firm suspension, allowing Sport to act as a relatively plush pseudo GT mode.
As with the refreshed DBX 707 and the DB12, this open-top Vantage makes a substantial leap forward in terms of interior quality. It sports an almost entirely leather-wrapped cabin, and in this tester’s case, is contrasted by matte carbon fiber trim and aluminum accents. While you’ll still find plenty of plastic buttons, the ones you interact with most often are physical, not touch-sensitive. Meanwhile, vital contact points such as its A/C controls, drive mode wheel, and gear selector all employ metal construction.
Aston’s tech suite was once its Achilles heel. However, thanks to the introduction of a configurable digital instrument cluster and a 10.25-inch central display, that’s no longer the case. The latter runs an in-house developed infotainment system that’s thoughtfully laid out and easy to operate on the move.
New for the roadster, the carmaker updated its cluster graphics, relocating the gear indicator away from the tach’s lower edge to where it should’ve been in the first place: right in the middle. Coupe owners will be happy to learn that Aston Martin plans to roll out this updated layout as part of an over-the-air software update.
Coming down the highway off-ramp, I switch to manual mode and spin the drive mode selector into Sport+. Just before I get to the winding road beyond the trees, a well-placed stopped sign gives me the seconds needed to stow the top as the Aston Martin Vantage Roadster fills the air with crackles from its valved exhaust.
The figures are downright absurd. While Aston does not attempt to conceal this twin-turbocharged V8’s AMG origins, larger turbochargers, a higher compression ratio, and revised camshafts allow it to produce 153 hp and 85 pound-feet of torque more than in the previous roadster. At 4.0 liters, its displacement is unchanged. However, that doesn’t stop its output from rising to 656 hp and 590 lb-ft. In other words, that’s why the convertible is only a tenth off the coupe’s time to 60 mph despite lugging around an extra 132 lb.
As I return to the throttle on the way out of the first of many corners with a lush forest consuming the desert scenery, the Vantage answers with brutal acceleration. It responds with no momentum lost to lagging turbos as a wave of low and mid-range torque kicks in. It’s an eight-speed automatic, a ZF-sourced unit, that rips through gears quickly as you lean on the accelerator. And while downshifts can sometimes take a split second, it’s quick enough to make the roadster feel rapid.
Yet as impressive as its straight-line performance is, nothing outshines this drop-top’s blaring engine note. It’s characterful, filling the air with authentic crackles and burbles as you come off the throttle. Get back on it, however, and you’ll encounter a V8 sound unlike any AMG on sale today. Aston’s unique quad-tipped exhaust system allows it to tune the notes’ characteristics, slightly raising its pitch and making it sound more exotic than most burbly Mercs.
Like the coupe, the Aston Martin Vantage Roadster isn’t just a grand tourer with a powerful engine. The British carmaker envisions it as a sports car, and that’s precisely what it is. Its suspension pairs a double-wishbone setup in the front with a multi-link rear axle, with all these components carrying over from the coupe unchanged. The same goes for its Bilstein DTX adaptive dampers. However, they employ updated tuning to account for the roadster’s added weight in the rear.
This added heft comes courtesy, in part, of this car’s new rear structure. Aston Martin modified how the body attaches to the roadster’s back end to ensure its torsional rigidity. This pairs with additional structural reinforcements to stiffen its structure to compensate for its open-top nature. Additionally, the carmaker reworked its roll-over bars to ensure they’re as strong as light as possible. Like its fixed-roof twin, this convertible counts on a bonded aluminum chassis and a transaxle out back to achieve its near-perfect 49:51 weight distribution. However, a pair of updated transmission mounts was necessary to ensure its ride remains consistent from roadster to coupe.
On the road, all that means is that chassis movements are practically undetectable behind the wheel. More importantly, the Vantage doesn’t have to rely on rock-hard dampers. And as I click out of Sport+ and into the top Track setting, its suspension hardens, but never to the point of spoiling the ride.
The Aston Martin Vantage Roadster touts a lightest possible dry weight figure of 3,670 lb, which is to say it’ll come in much closer to 4,000 lb in fighting form. That said, what you feel in tighter corners is this car’s size, not its weight. Like the coupe, the roadster has a widened front and rear track. It rides on 21-inch wheels as standard, wrapped in 275/35 and 325/30 Michelin Pilot Sport S 5 rubber. That’s an identical setup to what you’ll find on the larger DB12.
Its grip levels are astounding, and thanks to its well-controlled body motions, it remains stable between bends, feeling only a touch under-damped over large undulations at speed. Like most modern sports cars, its electric power steering is ultra-quick and responsive, but not overly communicative. That’s even with this car’s use of a non-isolated steering column. And, although a brisk drive on a mountain road isn’t enough to overwhelm this car’s standard set of steel brakes, Aston Martin offers carbon-ceramics as an optional extra.
Yet, as fabulous a sports car as the Aston Martin Vantage Roadster is, its cost is likely its main drawback. As of writing, pricing for this car has yet to be announced, with the main contributing factor being recent tariffs imposed by the U.S. government on foreign-made vehicles. While a recent agreement reached with the British and the American government sees that duty shrink from over 25 percent to ten percent, we still don’t yet know how much this roadster will cost.
For context, the coupe I drove last year carried a base figure of $194,500 and an as-tested price of $291,000. The roadster will likely start above the $200,000 mark, although by how much remains to be determined. Regardless, paying over $300,000 for Aston’s open-top sports car is a real possibility once optioned.
As I head back towards Palm Springs, the source of Reichman and Newton’s confidence is clear. The Aston Martin Vantage Roadster needs no fluff or excuses because it delivers. It’s stunning, wearing one of the most evocative shapes on four wheels. Powered by a rowdy powerhouse of a V8, it’s as thrilling on a back road as it is quick. Factor in its structural improvements, and you get an open-top sports car that’s just as exciting as its coupe counterpart while also sporting an equally high level of refinement.
However, given that the new Vantage coupe already received a price increase of over $45,000 as it entered its latest generation and the roadster is expected to do the same, further tariff-fueled hikes could make an otherwise stellar machine an unpalatable one.