Here's Aston Martin's New Baby: The 2019 Vantage
Aston Martin, the builder of high-end British sports cars, is currently going through an image overhaul. A partnership with Mercedes-Benz, an association with Red Bull Racing in formula 1, and soon, a supercar developed by Canadian company Multimatic, means it’s safe to say that things are going rather well at Aston Martin. After the DB11 announced earlier this year, here’s its latest creation: the 2019 Vantage.
Different
During our exchange with Ms Laura Schwab, president of Aston Martin The Americas, the businesswoman promised the new Vantage’s design would be considerably different than the DB11’s. Contrary to the current trend with carmakers, which try to makes all of their models resemble a common corporate design language, Aston Martin believes variety in design is crucial in making it stand out of the luxury sports-car segment. The 2019 Vantage therefore looks entirely different than the rest of the Aston Martin lineup.
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So what are we talking about, exactly? The Vantage is smaller than the DB11, but still borrows many structural components with its big sister. 70 percent of these components are all new and exclusive to the Vantage. The body is also entirely made of aluminium in order to reduce the car’s curb weight to a minimum. In fact, the Vantage only weighs 1529 kg, 280 kg less than a V8-powered DB11.
Under its hood sits a Mercedes-AMG 4.0-litre, twin-turbo V8. Power is rated at 503 horsepower and 505 lb.-ft. of torque. For now, the 2019 Vantage can only be had with a ZF eight-speed automatic gearbox. A manual transmission isn’t offered, at least not for now, which is contradictory to what Andrew Palmer, CEO of Aston Martin, promised us at the Toronto auto show last year when he said future Aston Martins will offer a manual transmission option.
That all being said, the automatic does not make the car boring, far from it. According to Aston Martin, its new coupe can accelerate from 0 to 96 km/h (0 to 60 mph) in only 3.6 seconds. The car will also be fitted with an all-new electronic rear differential which can go from fully locked to fully free in milliseconds, further increasing the car’s performance and precision around a race circuit.
The 2019 Aston Martin Vantage sells for a starting price of USD$149,995 and will go on sale in early 2018.