Aston Martin V12 Vantage ready to launch

Aston Martin V12 Vantage for sale! About time too. We were promised the V12 version of Aston’s Vantage what seems like ages ago, although not as long ago as we were promised the Rapide, which still isn’t here. Never mind, at least we’ve got the V12 Vantage to look forward to when it is officially launched at the Geneva Motor Show in March.

Although I’m a huge Aston fan (as you’ll know if you come here regularly) I just couldn’t quite fall in love with the original V8 Vantage. It certainly talked the talk, but when  push came to shove, it couldn’t quite walk the walk. It looked stunning, sounded wonderful and made me smile whenever I had one around, but it never set the heart racing when driving. It was more than competent, but I’d expected more.

Things improved with the ‘09MY cars; a few tweaks and a power boost and the V8 Vantage seemed more alive. It was certainly a better drive, but still not exactly class leading in the performance stakes.

But now we’ve got the real deal – the V12 Vantage. And this should blow your socks off. Aston have taken the V8 Vantage and shoe-horned in their best engine – the V12. Producing 510bhp and offering a 0-60 time of 4.1 seconds, it certainly promises to be a show stopper. No pretensions here to be a run-around, this is a manual only performance car with near perfect weight distribution. A 6-speed manual box (at the back) driven through a carbon fibre shaft delivers the power to the back wheels. The weight penalty of the V12 has been mitigated by liberal use of carbon fibre to keep the weight increase to just 110lbs.

The suspension has been stiffened and lowered, the V12 Vantage gets big ceramic brakes and even bigger rubber, and the bonnet gets an array of vents to dissipate all the heat from the big V12. Inside the car is trimmed in Alcantara with moulded leather bucket seats. Lots of carbon fibre and, of course, a proper aluminium gear lever.

I really can’t wait to get hold of the V12 Vantage, It promises to be exceptional. I doubt it will be cheap (Aston aren’t saying at the moment), but best guess is £135-145k.

Let’s hope it’s worth the wait.