a weekend with a V12 Vantage S Roadster
Thanks to AM Sevenoaks, I had the pleasure of this last weekend
What a car!
What an engine! What an engine! What an engine!
What a colour (not in a good way)!
The V12 is utterly magnificent. At any revs, in any gear and at any speed, there is music and joy for your ears. There is a distinct change at around 4k rpm from rumble, to howl, to race car scream right at the top; all the while accompanied by seamless, smooth, linear and unrelenting thrust. Sport mapping amplifies everything at lower rev ranges, and is, for me, too loud for town or city driving. The V12 is a masterpiece; there’s very little inertia, and it’s mighty responsive and free revving. Compared to my 997.2 GT3, it lacks nothing in responsiveness or revviness.
I thought SS III absolutely fine, and enjoyable. It’s mechanical, yet pleasant. It changes down quickly enough with auto blipping, while at the same time retaining your interest. I got it working very smoothly after an hour or so, even when seeing how quickly it accelerates. Best of all, you can use 2nd and 3rd on fast A and B roads to make the engine sing while retaining your licence (mostly). Low speed manoeuvring is excellent, except when you need super fine control when parking in tight spaces; when it can be a touch difficult to modulate. It’s an easy criticism to say that SSIII is ancient and not as good as dual clutch autos etc, but that’s missing the point. SSIII forces you to interact more intimately with the car, encourages you to have a conversation with the car, rather than shouting orders at it. For me, in this age of digital everything, and ease of use seemingly the be all and end all, SSIII is a superb antidote to the relentless march of “progress”.
The ADS is well suited to the car in almost all conditions. It provides excellent damping in normal mode on fast A and B roads with bumps and terrible cambers, keeping the car keyed into the road surface, allowing you to push the car without being thrown off course. Track mode is too jittery for UK roads, and pretty much pointless (much like sport damping on my GT3). Unfortunately, during the weekend, after some time in crawling London traffic, the ADS warning light came on together with emissions service warning – this turned the car rock hard, as if the dampers had been turned off. Once restarted, it was OK, but this happened a few times. Not good for a 5 month old car with 4500 miles.
Steering feel is not as fulsome as the V12VS coupe that I drove in Jul 14. It seems lighter, less connected and slightly more detached – I suspect that much of this is due the less rigid Roadster body and the 80kg of additional weight. It’s accurate enough though, with decent feel.
The V12VSR does a good job of hiding its weight, providing really superb agility and handling until you hit mid corner ridges, holes and bumps at high speeds when you feel the chassis groan and flex, and the car saying ‘ahem’. Not that it can’t deal with it, more that it feels a bit harassed, and would much rather not have to behave like that! Drive it smoothly while taking advantage of opportunities to run up and down through the gears on open, winding and clear roads on a Sunday morning, and I understand why folks are captivated by this car. I certainly was.
The interior was rattling and making all sorts of noises (especially noticeable with roof up) over London roads, which was very disconcerting for such a new car; this will no doubt drive me nuts over time. The infotainment is pretty fiddling and unintuitive, but nothing I couldn’t live it. I think the new Vanquish style console will improve things tremendously as information for non sat nav functions will at last be legible!
Astons attract attention, bright yellow ones much more so. It’s almost too aggressive a colour for an Aston, too shouty and too loud. It wasn’t love from the public all the way. I had white vans and assorted other nutters cut me up, and many others overtake me for no real reason at all. There was of course the usual nice comments and thumbs up.
After all this, you might ask, am I buying one? Yes, I probably would have. However, I could not get it into in the underground garage where I live as the expensive carbon fibre front splitter would not have survived its encounter with the flat concrete floor after the down ramp. I had to leave it overnight on East London streets which was a bit unnerving, with a £1000 insurance excess. Fortunately, nothing happened.
All of this means that unless I move, I can’t have any V12 Vantage of any kind (or any Vantage with the V12 style front splitter) at all :(
