Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster 2007 Review

Mont Ventoux is a 1900-metre lump in the middle of the southern French region of Vaucluse. Its twisting road to the summit is used in the Tour de France, and is so steep it gives me chest pains just looking at it. In fact, there are a couple of roadside monuments to cyclists who didn't quite make it to the top.

Obviously, it's an advantage to have a 283kW V8 to do the work in climbing Ventoux, and an even greater pleasure to have the Vantage Roadster's roof folded back so there's no impediment to the sound of a truly wonderful exhaust note ricocheting off the rock face. Even with the temperature hovering at zero near the summit, the combination of car, road and surroundings make it a truly great drive.

But you know what? While the smooth ascent resurfaced for cyclists was nice, it was the lumpy, chunked-up descent of a different road to the town of Sault that really showed how good Aston's roofless Vantage is. Diving deep into corrugated second-gear right handers, or pounding over blacktop scarred by ice or tree roots, produced barely a squeak of protest from the body or a wobble of the windscreen.

Aston claims the Roadster has around 80 percent the torsional rigidity of the Coupe - no mean feat. This stiffness is amply demonstrated on the road, revealing a useful performance car that just happens to have all the glamour of opening night at the Cannes Film Festival.

The Vantage Roadster arrives in June costing $269,000. That's a little more than Porsche charges for any of its 911 Cabriolets, but less than what a BMW M6 Convertible will set you back. Mind you, Aston Martin wants customers to part with extra cash for some basic equipment such as cruise control, sat-nav or xenons so the above figure is only a starting point.

The Roadster was developed alongside the Coupe, and AM says it allowed room in the boot for the fully automated soft-top to be stowed. Weight has increased by 75kg (to 1645kg), including the extra body stiffening, roof mechanism, and pop-up rollover bars, so performance is down given the 4.3-litre V8 remains in the same tune. Even so, the claimed 0-100km/h time of 5.0 seconds in either conventional manual or Sportshift sequential manual guise is fast. As is the top whack of 280km/h.

Like the Coupe, there's a bypass valve in the exhaust that gives a deep, resonant and addictive exhaust note on big throttle openings, and with the roof down there's always the temptation to make it bellow. Hang the fuel consumption, which is quoted at 15.0L/100km, so count on far worse. It's much quieter with the roof in place and even wind noise is barely audible, though the two-seat cockpit does feel a little cramped. The boot isn't big, but there are storage spaces behind the seats and a couple of small cubby holes in the centre console. If it wasn't for barely readable LED displays and poorly graduated major dials, it would be a relatively practical means of transport.

But who really cares when it is so good to drive? Forget about the rather cumbersome behaviour of the DB9 Volante; the Vantage Roadster is a much more agile beast. The small capacity V8 is peaky in its torque delivery but produces plenty of power towards its top end, providing bite was well as bark. The manual is okay, although a little baulky, but the Sportshift version is surprisingly useful. It has no centre-mounted gearshift, but relies on paddleshifts and dashboard mounted buttons for selecting neutral, reverse or fully-automatic mode. Shifts are deft and fast enough, and there's a 'creep' function for parking and low-speed manoeuvring.

The combination of a virtually flex-free body, and suspension rates stiffer than the Coupe result in deft handling. The optional 19-inch wheel and tyre package (18-inch is standard) provide ample grip, the steering is well weighted and communicative, and the balance of the chassis make it a rewarding car to drive quickly. The ride is solid rather than supple, but our introductory drive in the south of France indicated remarkable degrees of comfort that may well translate to compliance on Australian roads. The brake booster has also been revised to give a welcome degree of modulation compared with the coupe.

With its classic, long bonnet shape and upswept tail, the Vantage V8 Roadster looks great. It feels big and solid, but drives with a nimbleness that defies any suggestion it's a car built for pose instead of poise. Overall, there's no reason why this roofless Aston won't impress anyone interested in diving as much as attracting a crowd.

An open and shut case:
A solid folding hardtop was never considered due to a storage/styling clash, and because a proper coupe already existed. The fabric  roof stores above the fuel tank, takes 18 seconds to deploy and is strong enough to be operated at speeds up to 50km/h. Made by German firm Edscha, it was tested through 20,000 raise-and-lower cycles for durability. Roof up, the Roadster has a drag coefficient of 0.34, but roof down that hits about 0.39cd. Although top speed is affected, engineers say the front/rear aero lift balance is retained.

Body:
The use of aluminium extrusions in the Vantage's chassis helped when engineers set out to produce a rigid soft-top platform. Tooling is cheap for extruded aluminium, so it was easy to make the door sill components with thicker (stronger) walls than the Coupe. There are also flat structural panels under the engine bay and rear of the car, and a more complex beam within the dash joining the base of the A-pillars. Aston quotes a torsional rigidity of 21.9kN/degree for the Roadster compared with 27.5kN/degree for the Coupe, or more tellingly, 16.9kN/degree in the DB9 Volante.

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