You sit low in the
Aston Martin V8 Vantage, high bonnet bulging in front, windscreen shallow. You feel power ready to burst forth, an impression heightened by the way the Vantage’s bodywork hugs the mechanicals beneath: flared-out wheelarches, taut, pulled-in corners, compact muscularity. Press the start button, hear the V8 bark its awakening, snick the rear-mounted Graziano transaxle into the first of its six forward gears, roar off.
The engine note hardens as you approach 4,000rpm and an exhaust by-pass valve opens. It opens briefly on start-up, too, for added drama. At the same time the engine gets a second wind and rushes so keenly towards its limit that you wonder why what exactly would happen if the limiter was disabled.
So the temptation is to rev it all the time, belting out the V8 hammer-beat, flicking up and down the gears.
Pretty torquey, smoother, flowing
But you don’t need to over-drive the Aston like that. It’s actually pretty torquey low down, just less bombastic; it’s smoother and quicker to carry a higher gear through a corner, flowing and drifting and revelling in the the most interactive Aston in years. Its steering is quick, crisp and meaty, and its lack of ultimate transparency doesn’t matter so much when there are so many other dynamic clues acting on your body. Every corner is taken in a gently tail-out attitude, and you sense that if there was a little less grip you’d be doing delicious drifts to order. The Aston rides well, too.
Sportshift sequential gearbox
But what about the new Sportshift, similar to the systems used by Ferrari, Maserati and Lamborghini, which in truth are not quite as smooth as they might be, and took a long while to get there they are now. Can Aston Martin catch up that fast?
Does the Sportshift do the job? The V8 and the DB9 share the same the same facia and controls, with differences only in finish, so it’s no surprise to see the DB9’s paddle-shifters here in the V8. It has the same facia buttons to control the transmission functions, too (there’s no central selector lever), except that in place of ‘sport’ is ‘comfort’. You press this to slow and slur the Sportshift’s shifts when you’re not in the mood for rapid-fire gear-swapping, but ‘sport’ mode is the default setting. You can have the same two shift-speed modes when using Sportshift as an automatic, too.
Racy manual mode with good downshifts
But we’ll begin in racy manual mode. At idle there’s a bit of built-in ‘creep’, like a proper automatic; it helps in manoeuvring and in traffic-jam crawling. But we’re out of the traffic now and accelerating away. Into second with a pull on the right-hand paddle (the shifters are fixed to the steering column rather than turning with the wheel, a better solution because you always know where to find them). This first-to-second shift is the hardest one for a robotised manual to get smooth, because the torque reversals are at their greatest. And the Sportshift makes a pretty mediocre job of it.
The shifts get better thereafter, and the downshifts are as good as any of their type with a hearty throttle-blip and well-timed clutch engagement. And automatic mode? Well, this isn’t great, because of the usual problem of surge-pause-surge and the added difficulty of second-guessing when the shift will happen so you can’t be ready with a surge-smoothing easing of the throttle. Paradoxically it’s worse in comfort mode, because the pause during shifts is longer.
This was a pre-production system, and Aston Martin intends to fix them, as well as the snatch and surge as you come to a halt, caused by the clutch disengaging fractionally too late. With the wrongs righted, the Sportshift could be as effective as Ferrari’s now-good F1-shift, and already it’s easier to drive smoothly than the Vanquish’s transmission ever was.
Shift speed good for the track
Even as it is, the harder you drive the better it gets. I am in Bahrain, and after driving on quiet roads, I take the V8 Vantage Sportshift on to the race track there. The track is still wet as I drive the Sportshift down the pit lane. This track is a very 3-D sort of track, with hills and dips and some fiendishly tight bends, and the Vantage is about to prove a delight.
The shift speed is terrific for track use, if a touch violent on full-throttle, no-lift upshifts, and the 380bhp, 4.3-litre V8 is revving with percussive enthusiasm. This is a fine track car, benignly driftable even with ESP engaged, but a bit of a handful in these wet bends with it turned off.
Here is the Vantage in its element, the $6,000 (£3,000) Sportshift option making some sense. But having experienced just how good the manual can be, I’ll stick with the stick, thanks.
