Aston Martin unveils Vantage Roadster
Let’s get something out of the way, Aston Martin makes some of the most gorgeous cars on the market today. Period. One of the only things that are more beautiful than their coupes are their convertible versions, which add ‘Volante’ to the standard car’s moniker. The all-new Vantage is the latest to join that line, but with one big change — it drops the Volante name!
Called the Vantage Roadster, it shares the same 4-litre AMG sourced, twin-turbo V8 with the coupe. It makes 503hp and 685Nm of torque and sprints to 100kmph in just 3.7 seconds, a shade slower than the coupe. If you keep the throttle pinned (and the roof closed), the Vantage Roadster will hit a top speed of 305kmph. The Vantage Roadster comes paired to an eight-speed ZF automatic gearbox.
The Vantage Roadster’s roof is just as fast as the rest of the car, it folds or unfolds in under seven seconds, the fastest of any fully electronically operated convertible. The roof, with it’s Z-fold mechanism and the added chassis reinforcements add up to 60 kilograms over the standard car. The Vantage Roadster gets the same driving modes as the standard car too — Sport, Sport + and Track, but these are specifically altered for their application in the Roadster. The adaptive damping, dynamic stability control, dynamic torque vectoring and electronic rear differential are all tweaked for the Roadster, as are the rear dampers and ESP system.
Celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Vantage nameplate, Aston Martin has introduced a bunch of new options that can be specced to the fancy of the buyer. These include — the iconic ‘vane’ grille, a range of alloy wheels , and the coupe gets the option of a seven-speed manual gearbox that was previously only available in the limited run AMR version.
The Vantage Coupe is priced at Rs 2.95 Crore ex-showroom, so you can expect the Roadster to be priced at a premium of around Rs 25 lakh over that. It will go up against cars like the Mercedes-AMG GT, Ferrari Portofino and the Bentley Continental.
