Say what you like about global warming but it is not entirely without its
benefits. Mont Ventoux is famous not only for being one of the toughest
stages of the Tour de France, but also as one the great prewar European hill
climbs, when racing up the side of a mountain was a motor sport discipline
second only to grand prix racing for prestige.
But if you were silly enough to attempt to drive up at this time of year you’d
soon find your route blocked by several feet of snow. Mindful of this, every
year the French shut the road near the top of the pass until the end of
March, so there is not the slightest point going up as you’ll only have to
turn around and come back down again.
Unless, of course, you’re in a new Aston Martin Vantage Roadster, when it’s
worth it just for the drive. And thanks to the mild winter there is bone-dry
tarmac beneath you and clear blue skies above. The deserted Mont Ventoux is
your own personal playground for the day and as tough a test of a new sports
car as you’re ever likely to find.
My hopes for Aston’s latest convertible were not high, largely because its
last one, the DB9 Volante, so compromised the abilities of the coupé on
which it was based. The Volante looks good, goes fast and makes a fabulous
noise but it also creaks and rattles and feels stodgy and imprecise on a
decent road. It is a car for poseurs, not drivers. The Vantage Roadster has
the same basic chassis, and although its shorter wheelbase means it
shouldn’t flop about quite so much, it was hard to see how Aston’s engineers
could turn it into a car that’s as good to drive as it is to look at.
But they have done it. Believe me, any shortcomings resulting from carving the
roof off the car would have been blindingly obvious before we got halfway up
Mont Ventoux but in fact it drove damn near as well as the Vantage coupé.
Unlike most convertibles that pile on the pounds in the conversion process,
the Roadster has gained so little weight that Aston’s claimed performance
for the car is identical to the hard-top Vantage.
Indeed in one regard it’s more fun to drive hard than its aluminium-roofed
sister. Both cars have bypass valves in their exhausts that open up when you
floor the throttle, but instead of just turning up the muted hum of the
engine, as it does in the coupé, in the Roadster it sounds like you’ve
stumbled into a Nascar race. It’s so loud that you find yourself tiptoeing
through towns in case the valves accidentally open and scare all the
children. But away from the public gaze, they provide the Roadster with a
soundtrack to rival any Ferrari.
That said, Aston has not taken the opportunity to address any of the less
edifying issues that mar the Vantage coupé. There is still not enough space
inside for taller drivers and if you’re 6ft 3in like me,the only way you’ll
drive it in any comfort is in your socks. And while the roof mechanism works
outstandingly well — taking just 18sec to open or close at any speed below
30mph — once it is in place headroom is far from generous.
Then there are the lovely but almost unreadable instruments, the pathetic
glove box, the general lack of storage space on board and the frankly
outrageous fact that this £91,000 convertible does not even have
seat-warmers or sat nav as standard. And even if you do spend an extra
£1,750 on navigation, all you’ll get is a clunky old system with dreadful
graphics that’s awful to use and looks cheap, even in its usual home on the
dashboard of Volvos.
Also, don’t get tempted into spending a further £3,000 on the Sportshift
transmission. The steering-column-mounted paddles make you look like Lewis
Hamilton, but their slow shifts won’t make you drive like him. During what
was admittedly a fair bit of to-and-fro manoeuvring while driving past the Sunday
Times photographer, the clutch started to smell expensively. It’s much
better to save the money and stick with the standard, and excellent,
six-speed gearbox.
So the Roadster is not perfect, but what Aston Martin ever was? What matters
more is that in the way it looks and the way it goes it is entirely
deserving of the Aston wings, something I’d hesitate to say about most
convertible Astons I’ve driven.
At heart I am not a convertible enthusiast. I know no better way of wrecking a
car’s performance and handling than by sawing off its roof. But the Roadster
gives away almost nothing to the coupé and gains that awesome soundtrack.
Hold a gun to my head and force me to choose and I’d still have the coupé
because I’ve never seen the point of driving fast with the roof down. But if
you like the idea of a convertible Aston, this is a good effort, which is
more than I can say for the DB9 Volante. Indeed, if you wanted a car to
sweep you down to the south of France, let you bask in the sun and attract
kerbside envy, then storm Mont Ventoux on the way home, I can’t think of
anything with fewer than six digits in its price that could possibly do it
better than this.
Indeed it is cars like this that made Aston Martin such an enticing
proposition and why, if the rumours are to be believed, investors were
queueing up to buy it when Ford signalled it would be sold to reduce its
overdraft.
Fifteen years ago, Aston Martin was close to becoming a moribund marque. It
was given a reprieve only because of Kuwaitis reordering all the Astons that
Saddam’s troops had blown up in the first Gulf war. Yet now it is once again
one of the most coveted brands on the planet.
The DB9 has been joined by a Volante, the Vantage and now its drop-top sister.
The Vanquish has been updated into the Vanquish S and anyone who’s seen
Casino Royale will already know that the DBS, the car that will replace the
Vanquish S at the top of the range, is ready and due on sale in September.
And it’s not done yet. In 2009 Aston Martin will start building the Rapide,
its first four-door car since the weird-looking Lagonda of the 1970s and
1980s, and if that fills you with fear that the company may be losing its
marbles again, you should relax. The talk is that it will look hardly any
different from the Rapide concept shown early last year, as beautiful and
well proportioned a four-door car as I’ve seen in many years. The factory
needs to be extended to build it, but once it’s in full production Aston
Martin will make more than 9,000 cars a year, which is about what Bentley is
doing at the moment. These may be small numbers by Ford standards, but for
Aston Martin they are unprecedented.
Perhaps the best news of all, at least for those concerned about Aston’s
long-term future, is that by the end of this year and for as far into the
future as it is sensible to look, every single Aston from this short,
stubby, convertible Roadster to the long, flowing four-door Rapide will be
built around the same adaptable platform. It means when Aston Martin decides
to build a new car most of the hard work has already been done and most of
the hardware will already exist.
It was the absence of this kind of adaptable thinking that got Aston Martin
into so much trouble in the past, so it’s good to see that times have
changed.
Model Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster
Engine 4280cc, eight cylinders
Power 380bhp @ 7300rpm
Torque 302 lb ft @ 5000rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual
Fuel 18.8mpg (combined)
CO2 358g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 4.9sec
Top speed 175mph
Price £91,000
Rating Four stars
Verdict Aston’s finest convertible in decades
Jeremy Clarkson is away
