Aston Martin’s Vanquish Volante Blew the Roof Off Expectations

Aston Martin is on a roll. The venerable brand has, for well over a century, been a producer of debonair, distinctly British, sport/luxury cars, known mainly for startling good looks and an attitude that is more sophisticated and less tetchy than its Italian rivals. But it has rarely been a top player in outright performance, and—as an independent company—its livelihood and very existence have frequently been dubious.

That has changed recently. Following massive cash infusions by investor Lawrence Stroll, and its hiring of the Adrians—ex-Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmark and ex-Red Bull Racing CTO Adrian Newey—the company has committed to upgrading its image, and its vehicles. “Our clear objective,” Hallmark says, “is to move Aston Martin from a high-potential brand, to a high-performance business.”

Aston has thus, in roughly 18 months, revamped its entire portfolio, releasing several new cars, along with some variants, including the DB12 grand tourer, the next-gen Vantage sports car, and the Vanquish super-sports GT. The $489,700 Vanquish Volante (convertible) is the latest addition. And it may be our favorite of the current lineup.

What’s New for 2025

The closed-top version of the all-new Vanquish appeared stateside last year, and, because convertibles are proliferating in the ultra-luxury market, the droptop’s appearance was inevitable. The Volante has gained only 200 pounds in its roof-ectomy, while retaining everything else we loved about the Vanquish coupe. Sans top, which can be retracted via a dashboard switch in just 14 seconds at speeds up to 31 mph (or when standing nearby, when parked, via a key fob button), the Vanquish Volante has the added benefit of allowing one to better hear the engine’s glorious and potent symphony.

Design

The Vanquish is a replacement for Aston’s former range-topper, the DBS Superleggera, but it has moved upmarket and up-power. For that reason, its design needed to advance as well. Mission accomplished, Aston. The new car retains a familial resemblance, though, with a toothy plateau-shaped aluminum grille, a long hood, deeply sculpted side coves, muscularly flared rear-wheel arches, and a flattened Kamm Tail rear end with a subtly integrated spoiler. It also, like its predecessor, sports carbon-fiber body panels over a bonded-aluminum chassis. But everything about it has been enhanced and dramatized.

This is mainly a function of its lengthening and widening by three inches and one inch, respectively, over its predecessor. These numbers may seem small, but their effect is profound, especially when wielded by longtime Aston design chief Marek Reichman and his team, who have masterfully created a timeless brand language that continues to evolve and feel au courant while never capitulating to trends. The Vanquish coupe is a menacing bruiser with the stunning good looks of a mature male model. The Vanquish Volante is that guy with his top off. You can’t stop staring.  

The interior materials are equally compelling, with nearly every surface—including a lovely “waterfall” running from the hard tonneau that covers the retracted top into the rear storage compartment behind the Volante’s two seats—covered in flawless, perforated, and patterned Bridge of Weir leather. We’ve long been fond of Aston’s traditional use of wood in its cabins, but found ourselves startlingly starstruck by a carbon-fiber trim, woven with what looked like copper and rose gold, especially when the sun hit it, which it does often with the top down.

The car’s technological functionality—long an Aston shortcoming as it suffered through outmoded infotainment systems it purchased from Mercedes—is now far more appealing, as Aston now has its own bespoke system, with many hard buttons. But just when it started to get things right, it’s handed many capabilities over to Apple CarPlay Plus. This new system, to which Aston is the first automaker to subscribe, allows one’s phone to commandeer not just the center display but the dashboard. Sadly, its operation is glitchy, and frequently failed to work in areas that lacked—or had fractured—cell reception, which were plentiful on our drive in New York City and Upstate New York. Hopefully, updates will reconcile this. Our fix was to disconnect it, and use Aston’s native system.

Power Train and Hardware

The Vanquish convertible shares its 824 hp, 5.2-liter twin-turbo V-12 engine, eight-speed ZF torque-converter automatic transmission, trick limited-slip electronic differential, and front-mid engine/rear-wheel-drive power-train layout with its closed-top counterpart, and we have almost no criticism of it. (More on that below.)

We toggled through three of its selectable driving modes—GT, Sport, and Sport+. (We didn’t get to try out Wet due to the glorious sunny weather on our drive day.) But the Individual mode is our set-up of choice, allowing us to combine the delightfully compliant suspension and steering geometry of the GT setting with the mellifluous (and louder) exhaust note and crisper throttle inputs and shift times of the Sport settings.

The Volante also shares the adaptable Bilstein shocks, large wheels, standard carbon-ceramic brakes, custom-developed Pirelli P-Zero tires (sizes 275/35/21 in front; 325/30/21 out back), and available titanium exhaust with its stablemate, though it has re-engineered the rear damper and front and rear strut braces to compensate for the convertible’s additional weight and to add stiffness denied by the loss of a roof. The top itself is an eight-layer cloth construction that satisfyingly hushes the cabin when raised.

For those who reside anywhere with broken pavement and steep curb cuts, the lack of a mechanism for lifting the Volante’s front end seems like an oversight, especially since the car’s enhanced hood length and deep seating position place that area at greater risk due to the driver’s perspective.

Performance

Aston claims that the Vanquish Volante has a top speed of 214 mph and the ability to cover zero to 60 mph in 3.3 seconds, matching that of the coupe. While we did not attempt to meet the former, we can attest to the seat-of-the-pants accuracy of the latter—it may even be faster if one can get all the power to stick to the road, no small feat. Better yet, its beautifully tuned chassis and smooth-shifting gearbox help avoid the brain slamming experienced in other supercars during flat-out acceleration. It somehow always feels composed, especially when blasting through on-ramps or overtaking at nearly any speed.

Handling strikes an exquisite balance between suppleness and tethering grip, even in the sportiest settings, readily absorbing New York’s crumbling pavement and cavernous expansion joints without telegraphing harshness into the cabin, whilst making quick and secure work of sweeping turns and twisties. Given its mass and width, it’s not a sports car on tight and technical turns. Yet roaring through the woods, lakeside byways, and mountain roads that made up the most intriguing parts of our drive, we found little fault in its communicative steering, its well-modulated brake pedal, and especially its eight-speed transmission, which commendably holds a gear up to the engine’s euphonious redline.

That motor and exhaust note strikes a uniquely alluring balance: less screamy than Ferrari’s 12Cililndri Spider and less of a muffling bombast than Bentley’s Continental GTC, two of its nearest competitors. In a day of top-down motoring, we never tired of it.

Is It Worth It?

Aston Martin has, as noted, pushed its cars decidedly upmarket, and this pinnacle offering now competes, in price and power, directly with vehicles such as the $504,000 Ferrari 12Cilindri Spider while coming in well above the Bentley Continental GTC, which starts at $336,000. If that makes its price reasonable, so be it.  

Notably, it is, unlike the Bentley and the Ferrari, a limited-production model, with Aston stating that fewer than 400 examples of the Vanquish Volante (and 600 Vanquish coupes) will be made annually, worldwide, which should help with resale. It offers a different proposition, stylistically and behaviorally, from the higher-strung retrofuturism of the Ferrari, or the blunted traditionalism of the Bentley, and for that, we adored it—perhaps more than the other two. Potential owners could likely buy all three, so they won’t have to stoop to making such choices.

Specifications

Click here for more photos of the Aston Martin Vanquish Volante.