Buying an Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster … Reasons For and Against
I lived without a car for 7 years. That happened to work well as a confluence of personal events meeting an urban lifestyle with decent public and shared transportation options. It also made it very clear that I don’t need a car. With irrefutable evidence that my car would be a toy, that my carbon footprint had been impeccable and that I had saved a small fortune, I had great license to rationalize an impractical choice. Beautiful. Naturally aspirated. Analog. V8. North of 400HP. Two-seater. Convertible. British. I could stop there.
With the benefit of hindsight, though, I thought I should share what has and hasn’t worked out owning my dream car for the last year. Note that this is NOT a buyer’s guide on how to find a good car or value. Plenty of great content on the internet from Bamford Rose, redpants.lol and others. I’ll just deconstruct the words in the title to start.
First drive up the California coast - Dec 2019
Beginning with “2015”. This is the latest model year of the Roadster that still has the analog clock. Yes, this was a purchase criterion. I help make computers for a living so I really don’t want to end the day and get in a car looks like a computer or is driven by a computer. The fallacy there is that of course under the covers there are many microprocessors, but with the Aston they are discreetly unobtrusive. The navigation screen (hideous) can likewise be discreetly hidden in the dash. The engine sucks in its own air and in this car I can row my own gears. I find this deeply satisfying. If none of that matters to you there are newer cars out there. The 2012.25 to 2016 model year cars are, of course, vastly superior to the 2009-2012 cars. Unless you drive a manual. Without the updated Sportshift gearbox there is very little in it. Details for the clinically nerdy can be found here.
On to “Aston Martin”. Well, they’re just beautiful, aren’t they? The Gaydon era cars, starting with the Ian Callum designed DB7 and V12 Vanquish and finished by Henrik Fisker for the Vantage, are achingly gorgeous. Some might disagree, but nobody worth speaking of. Though aesthetic tastes are very personal, there is a fundamental difference between a Rodin sculpture and my pre-school clay ashtray. Everyone can see it. And these Astons are understated enough that bystanders don’t hate on them, in contrast to certain screaming Italian doorstops that might dominate on a track. From the Germans I have to respect that the beloved Porsche 911 has an enduring and graceful profile that has stood the test of time like no other, yet they are so numerous as to fade into the scenery.
As for the “V8 Vantage” part, frankly it is the most affordable. Now well-depreciated and well-loved used examples are going for the cost of a new minivan or pickup truck. An easy choice unless that is the last of your savings. There are better cars in the Aston lineup by almost all measures: performance, rarity, luxury. At deservedly higher prices. In my case the baby Aston has a practical benefit in that I have one parking space on a car lift. Very tight. A foot shorter is a blessing. The V12 Vantage would also fit, of course, but they are the stuff of legend and manual roadsters are rarer than a unicorn with zebra stripes. Very hard to find**. As the sportier car in the range even the V8 two-seater is a ton of fun. With the V8 behind the front axle and the gearbox in the rear, the front-rear balance is near perfect and the handling is superb for a relatively heavy car (3,770 lbs). Luxury, apparently, is heavy. As an aside, it is an oddity that all Gaydon era Astons weigh about the same, plus or minus the heft of a passenger. More cylinders, more gears, more luxury; no problem. The variable is the price.
Insisting on a convertible “Roadster” in Seattle has made me an object of mockery several times. First, it does not rain that much in Seattle. Houston gets more inches of rain. That said, it is very gray for much of the year, so when the sun comes out it is celebrated. What better way to celebrate great weather than in a top-down sports car? Plus, some (e.g. me) prefer the lines over the coupe, despite the coupe being a lovely hatchback. A legitimate argument for a coupe from the purist is rigidity, but the Aston VH architecture lends itself well to not folding in half when you cut the roof off. The handling and balance are still sublime.
None of these things have disappointed but I must acknowledge a few compromises as an only car. First, the boot / trunk space. At less than 10 cubic feet in the roadster there is room for a weekend bag, camera bag, computer bag, car bag, snacks and light hiking gear. Sadly that leaves room for a companion or their luggage. Not both. Awkward. No supermodel in the passenger seat. Bubble burst. In the same model year the DB9 and, better still, the Vanquish have greater grand tourer credentials.
Next comes practicality as an all-season car. As I write my nerves are finally re-raveling after disrespecting a weather forecast and taking a winding northwest backroad through a (somewhat) unexpected snowstorm. Fun. Exciting. No, harrowing. Don’t do it. Even seasoned professionals crashed in the ill-fated “Astons on Ice” program. Not the car’s forte and well beyond my abilities.
As mentioned in a previous chapter, the cars, if well maintained, are reliable. Until you break something. Don’t break something. If you are on a road trip, which you should be, the nearest qualified repair shop could be two states away. That’s an expensive tow. And if you broke something that isn’t on the shelf, getting parts from the UK can take a very long time. More on that in a future chapter. Take good care of your Aston.
Another thing that could disappoint is if you are looking for an attention-getting supercar. This is not that. In the Northwest, which is not a big car culture like California, the car goes largely under the radar. It gets a fair number of compliments, but it doesn’t turn heads rolling down the street. It is easy to under-appreciate how rare these cars are*, so there is not a lot of unprompted recognition in a typical sample population. For those of us who prefer the understated Aston “brute in a suit” ethos that fits just fine.
A niggle, depending on your parking situation, is that we are advised to avoid driving a Vantage uphill in reverse because it is brutal to the clutch. In fact it violates one of Steve Seidlitz’s Golden Rules of Owning an Aston Martin: “Avoid reversing uphill at all costs” (see The Golden Rules — Redpants). Reverse is only slightly less steeply geared than second. The car will do 50 mph in reverse. Who needs their car to do 50 mph in reverse? Nobody publishes backwards 0-50 times. So if, like me, you have a parking spot that you need to reverse upwards out of you will either stall or fly ass-first out of your space. More on that another time.
The last thing to mention against the car is visibility. The all-around visibility from the cockpit is great, and with the top down it is near perfect. But the car is very low. The engine has a race-derived dry sump to avoid an oil pan, mounting the engine low for a low center of gravity for handling. Similar notion applied for the driver and passenger. You cannot see the traffic ahead through even a Prius, and you are invisible to behemoth SUVs and pickups. If you spend all your time in stop and go traffic you might be happier in a monster truck. A related fact frequently cited by reviewers is that you can’t see the ends of the car. This makes parking a little nerve wracking at first, and you need to learn to trust that little rearview reversing camera. Nobody thinks to mention, however, that what you are looking out at instead is the road in front of you, and that extra three feet of visible pavement before you go over it is very welcome during spirited driving on twisty roads. That, after all, is what these cars are for.
* I haven’t found an exact number for 2015 Vantage Roadsters in the US. In 2015 Aston produced a total of 3,615 cars across all models and markets.
** There are 122 V12 Vantage S Roadsters in the US, of which 36 are manuals, according to the PistonHeads forum.