Aston Martin Vanquish | PH Favorite Cars 2025

This year, thanks to the summer launch of the open-top Volante, we got a second bite of Aston’s cherry. Sadly we didn’t get a second bite from the weather: rarely has South Wales been more brutal or have brave photographers been more soaked. We were caught in the eyes of Storm Bram, and we spent far more time sitting in cars and staring bleakly outside than driving without a roof, as God (and Gaydon) intended. This explains the relatively few images accompanying these words, although this did not explain any loss of affection for the Conqueror on that day, which, believe me, is quite an achievement.

In years past, the prospect of driving a big, convertible Aston Martin through a Welsh storm would be about as appealing as learning Welsh. Cars like the old Vanquish were fine in small, sun-soaked doses, but it had neither the ride quality nor a strong enough grip on the power of its 5.9-liter V12 to make you enjoy driving it uphill and rain-soaked downhill. Its spiritual successor, endowed with a ridiculous-sounding 835 horsepower, let’s not forget, is a completely different kettle of fish. Not even the presence of a Rolls-Royce Ghost on that day, with its all-wheel drive, higher ride height and the dissociative weight of an A380, could tempt me away from the Vanquish.

Aston will be happy to hear that. When it launched its flagship last year, the topic of progress was a hot topic. In developing the Vanquish, the company had a keen eye for what it saw as the conceptual white space between the suave opulence of Rolls-Royce and the austere engineering brilliance of Ferrari. To get there, the old 5.2-liter unit was field stripped and much of it discarded. Its replacement was actually considered new and purpose-built to make your head spin. With 738Nm of torque available from 2,500rpm, it proved so flashy that no one even joked about the 80mm extra wheelbase installed between the Vanquish’s A-pillar and the front axle. For once, the creator didn’t compensate anything; it was very serious to be compared to the best.

That’s not to say, even now, that Aston can’t do better: failure to connect to Apple CarPlay Ultra means enduring astonishing infotainment load times; there’s really nowhere to put anything that isn’t in the shape of a small cup or a sheet of paper; and the roof mechanism switch proved remarkably unstable when deciding what an open (or closed) bonnet was or the conditions required to move from one to the other – but none of these minor niggles ever threatened to develop into a major, experience-ruining one. And when you consider that in Wales there was almost never the opportunity to blow away the cobwebs with the big roar of an engine, it felt like progress too.

Apart from the cool, nineties charisma of a manual V12 Vantage S, the standard Vanquish is by far the most impressive Aston Martin I’ve ever driven. The convertible is marginally inferior for all the usual reasons – but that hardly limits the justification for buying one, assuming that by consciously not choosing the coupe you mainly care about a) the feeling of the wind pushing your pony back, and b) bragging rights. Even in the wrong shade of paint on the wrong color wheels, in the midst of a near-permanent downpour, the Volante provides a magnetic presence. The Met Office estimated there were gusts of 50mph on the Brecons; it didn’t stop passersby from risking their lives for a photo.

In the fleeting moments of sustained toplessness, the Vanquish didn’t disappoint either. The Volante is slightly heavier than the coupe and requires subtly different settings for the DTX dampers, but the chassis hardware is unchanged, as is the engine calibration. Unsurprisingly, the latter almost never reminds you that the only thing more desirable than a pleasant breeze is a breeze with a V12 siren song. Every gurgle and sigh of the turbo reminds you that you wasted money at the end of the terrace on a 5.2 liter comfort blanket. But if you lift a corner at any time, you’ll see an active blast furnace underneath.

Previous experience with the Volante in July (somewhat ironically also in Yorkshire) suggests that Sport is the driving mode best selected when this mood takes you, accessing higher levels of responsiveness without unnecessarily undermining the Vanquish’s admirable compliance. But again, the passing maelstrom highlighted not just the flagship’s talent for winning your heart – something previous models, including the DBS Superleggera, were already adept at – but rather its roundness and heretofore non-threatening practicality.

Aston has consistently reiterated that the car’s default ‘GT’ setting was meant to live up to its name, implying that not everyone – virtually no one, potentially – wanted that much horsepower all the time. Instead, the owners wanted to be able to sit back and relax. And not just to harmonize with the road surface like a Rolls-Royce would, but to properly locate their natural flow state in the 835 hp theme park, without tiptoeing around a menacing rear axle. Granted, few would look for it in a named storm, but the fact that you can doing that in the Volante, and finding it effortless, without feeling guilty for letting so much power go to waste, is possibly the most revealing measure of the Vanquish’s greatness – not to mention the wider journey Aston is on. If the new Valhalla surpasses it next year, the envisioned promised land certainly beckons.

Engine: 5,204 cc, twin turbo, V12
Transfer: 8-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 835 at 6,500 rpm
Torque (lb⋅ft): 738 at 2,500-5,000 rpm
0-100 km/h: 3.4 seconds
Top speed: 344 km/h
Weight: 2,005kg (EU unloaded)
MPG: 20
CO2: 21 g/km
Price: c£400,000)

If it weren’t for Aston’s V12-powered powerhouse, a Mercedes could very well have ended up atop the Christmas tree this year. The GT 63 E Performance, for example, proved that rare thing: a truly likeable hybrid – albeit with a V8 and 816 hp. But since the purpose of the annual PH gongs is to reward personal favorites, I tip my hat to the G500 we tested in January. That some people find the G-Class objectionable is understandable based on its asking price and colossal weight, but the fact is that with a 3.0-liter six-cylinder gasoline engine, the more affordable version leaves the G63’s antagonistic qualities behind and continues to be a modern G-Wagen. And in 2025, when you have to stroll almost everywhere, it turns out to be a very pleasant way to travel.