Storied British sports car maker Aston Martin’s move into Formula 1 racing has released the brand from the nostalgic niche that had the company pigeonholed as an accessory to a fictional British action hero.
Now that it is aligned with real-life Formula 1 drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll and the high-tech machines they pilot 24 Sundays a year, Aston is seen as a true peer of its famous scarlet rival from Maranello.
This brings the benefit of added attention and credibility for Aston’s products, but it also brings higher expectations. “Quirky” won’t cut it anymore, and neither will anachronistic features that Aston has recently banished from its products, like its push-button shift selector or its obsolete infotainment system.
So when Aston rolled out its new Vanquish, a $429,000, 824-horsepower, 214-mph V12-powered flagship for a test drive in Sardinia, expectations were as high as its price and performance specifications. Just as there are no excuses for the Aston Martin team’s performance against best-in-the-world rivals at Formula 1 race tracks, so there can be none in showroom competition against the likes of McLaren and Ferrari.
As with their race car, Aston brought an impressive roster of blue-chip technical partners to the Vanquish project, including Bilstein, Pirelli, Michelin, Bosch, Brembo, Valvoline, and ZF.
Behind the wheel
Popular Science has recently driven the Aston DB12 and Vantage, and while the Vanquish bears a resemblance to its lesser siblings, a side-by-side comparison shows that its sinuous lines are even more thrilling. Viewed from the rear three-quarter angle, the Vanquish recalls an arrow, drawn from its quiver and aimed at the target.
The Vanquish cuts a rakish profile that is underscored by a wheelbase that is 3.1 inches longer than that of the DBS, which was Aston’s most recent V12 model in the Vanquish’s grand touring class. This length was all added ahead of the windshield, giving the Vanquish the bold proportions of a proper dream car. As an added practical benefit, legroom is increased, aiding the Vanquish’s comfort.
Attractive as the wrapper is, the hardware underneath is even more critical. In the case of the Vanquish, that starts with a chassis that is a stunning 75 percent stiffer in lateral rigidity at the front axle, when compared to the DBS. This was achieved through the installation of a stronger carbon fiber cross-brace between the front shock towers and a thicker undertray bolted beneath the engine.
This, and a 51/49 percent front/rear weight distribution lets this large car respond adroitly to steering input, accurately tracking the intended course and providing good road feel and feedback. This solid foundation enables the Bilstein DTX shock absorbers to do their work, with fast reaction times that let the various drive mode settings deliver distinctly different ride and handling characteristics.
The electronic differential adjusts the torque balance between the left and right rear wheels, going from fully open to fully locked (or vice-versa) in 135 milliseconds. It works with the Vanquish’s Corner Braking 2.0 system to aid turn-in, as the e-diff can send more power to the wheel on the outside of the turn while the brake system can apply more brake force to the wheel on the inside to help the car rotate to the apex.
The effect of these systems is subtle, as the driver should feel heroic, not overridden. “It doesn’t feel as if the system has taken over, which is very important to us,” said Aston Martin senior vehicle engineering manager James Owen. Indeed, blending brakes and steering input to bend the Vanquish into the twisting curves of the Sardinian mountains reveals the Vanquish to be a comfortable and quick partner.
Those brakes are the real deal. In an emergency stop, the Vanquish’s Brembo carbon ceramic brakes halt progress from 100 kph (62 mph) in less than 30 meters (98.4 feet), a common European benchmark for truly superlative braking. In normal driving, the brakes provide progressive response, so there is none of the over-boosted grabbiness that is typical of Ferrari’s brakes, even on touring models like the Purosangue.
The comfortable portion of the equation is critical for the Vanquish. This isn’t the track-ready Vantage. It is a grand tourer, meant to shorten long road trips with its combination of speed and comfort. This is achieved through the previously mentioned advanced suspension, which allows drivers to select an appropriate setup for the driving they plan to do.
“Aston Martins, we always say, have to breathe with the road,” said Owen. “They have to have that body control and have no harsh impacts and really give the driver the sensation and confidence that they really know what each corner is doing.”
It is abetted in this effort with the plush leather appointments, on-the-road silence thanks to the Pirelli tires, and an impressive Bowers & Wilkins 15-speaker audio system. The Pirelli Noise Cancelling System is a technology that can reduce noise inside the car by half thanks to a sound-absorbing device mounted on the inside of the tire.
The Vanquish’s hallmark is its twin-turbocharged V12 engine, a new design with its roots in the previous version. The only carried-over part is the front accessory belt pulley, according to Owen.
The new engine has a reinforced cylinder block and revised head bolt fasteners to cope with the 15 percent higher cylinder head pressures. The connecting rods are also reinforced to withstand the higher loads, while the camshafts have been revised to move more air and fuel through the engine’s revised intake and exhaust ports.
The fuel injection system has 10 percent higher flow rate injectors and the reduced-mass turbochargers provide quicker throttle response. To minimize turbo lag, the time needed for the turbos to spin up to speed and provide boost, Aston has developed a system it calls Boost Reserve.
“Boost Reserve effectively overboosts the turbos when you’re at partial throttle or off throttle, we hold that charged air behind the throttle blade,” Owen explained, “and using our intelligent wastegate system, we’re able to deliver that when throttle is applied. Effectively, it eradicates turbo lag.”
Boost Reserve delivers on this promise, as there was no discernable delay in power delivery when accelerating out of slow corners. Indeed, the V12 makes so much power that Aston engineers have innovated another technology to help manage the engine’s torque while driving in GT mode.
GT mode is supposed to be a more relaxed driving philosophy than Sport or hair-on-fire Sport+, so the engine management computer meters the V12’s torque output more judiciously in that setting. It has a separate torque delivery curve for each of the eight gears in the ZF automatic transmission, with power tailored to match the requirements of each.
“With a thousand newton-meters of torque, sometimes less is more,” noted Owen. “We effectively shape the torque in every single gear. This gives us the ability to tune, to specifically tune each gear to produce the characteristic we want that suits the GT mode, that suits the throttle pedal, that suits the dynamics of the car.”
The Vanquish is not without its faults
Lovely as the Vanquish is while carving through mountain roads with comfort and panache, it is not perfect. Passengers will immediately notice the absence of an overhead grab handle to stabilize themselves while the car slices through the turns. A door-mounted handle is ineffective for this purpose because it is too low.
But the real surprise, for a grand touring car whose engineers placed an emphasis on providing easy, comfortable speed is the transmission calibration. Even in GT mode, the transmission is just too busy. It is understandable that the transmission downshifts aggressively under acceleration and when braking for upcoming turns while driving in Sport and Sport+ modes.
But while driving in GT mode, when the object is to never let them see you sweat, Aston has programmed the stellar ZF 8-speed automatic transmission to use more of those gears than it should, frequently making two-gear downshifts when a single gear is all that is called for. It feels like maybe the calibration engineers got a little too focused on their track testing while developing the car, considering that this isn’t a model that is meant for such use.
The problem can be addressed by using the custom mode settings, which lets you mix and match the settings from the different modes and apply them to the car’s drivetrain, suspension, and steering characteristics. This lets you choose the soft settings for the Wet driving mode for the transmission while retaining GT or even Sport settings for the suspension.
Perhaps this is Aston’s way of letting you feel more like one of the race team’s drivers, as you pore through the available adjustments to dial the car in to provide exactly the performance you prefer. Then you’ll be too busy to give any thought to fictional spy movie franchises.
