Is the Aston Martin Vantage Roadster a Good Sports Car?
- You’ll be hard-pressed to find a two-seat convertible sports car that blends as much character, class, style and stonkin’ performance as the 2026 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster.
How Does the Aston Martin Vantage Roadster Compare With Other Sports Cars?
- In the Vantage’s world, it’s the same as it ever was. With a competition field filled with back-roads weapons like the Porsche 911 Carrera GTS, Corvette Z06 and Mercedes-AMG GT, the Aston Martin stands out with wicked good looks and enough performance to match any of them.
When you weren’t looking, Aston Martin got serious — really, really serious. The last time a British automaker buckled down as hard as Aston’s folks have over the past few years, we got the McLaren 720S, and that was a triumph. The 2026 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster is also a triumph both mechanically and existentially, if not only for the marque’s clear intent on bringing the winged badge back to the forefront of performance.
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We here at Cars.com usually refrain from discussing much about a car’s styling — it’s a very subjective thing to arbitrate on — but my goodness! The refreshed Vantage is easily one of the best-looking things I’ve seen on the road in quite some time, and it makes it all look so easy. It also makes you wonder how the prior iteration left the cutting floor with that controversial shark snout and featureless grille that all looked a bit underwhelming, especially with its narrow-profile headlights.
“Underwhelming” is the last thing an Aston should ever be, and the new front end and musclebound proportions fix every stylistic issue. Other than a new egg-carton-style grille and a set of more traditional headlights, the bottom portion of the car below the grille is now painted, neatly fixing its predecessor’s severe underbite and bringing us full circle back to that signature gawping-catfish grille that’s defined the brand for over 70 years now. This is the best the baby AM has looked in years, and this is especially true when you drop that electrically operated top, an operation that takes a shockingly scant 6.8 seconds — or, quicker than most new cars will hit 60 mph.
What Engine Does the 2026 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster Have?
That’s no such problem in the Vantage. The Mercedes-AMG-sourced twin-turbo 4.0-liter V-8 also returns, only now with around 153 extra Brit-bred horses from before, with “base” output at a mighty 656 horsepower and tire-thwonking 590 pounds-feet of torque. Any Aston engineer reading this likely just chucked their spanner; brand reps and program managers on hand at the Roadster’s drive program in Palm Springs, Calif., made it clear just how far removed the Vantage’s new heart is from the old AMG engine.
In fact, they were rather dour on the prior Vantage as a whole, citing how relatively “restrained” its performance and on-road character was. (Uh, fellas: I drove the prior V-8-powered Vantage on three separate extended occasions, and at no point was that 503-hp, 505-pounds-feet supercoupe remotely restrained.) In the spirit of all Astons from that renaissance era of forced-induction power, the last Vantage was a torque-‘n’-turbo-forward brute in a suit that chased the likes of a Carrera GTS or Corvette Grand Sport down the mountain and beat them to a pulp at the valet stand.
This new Vantage? Its 656 hp means you’re now up the soot chute of a 911 Turbo or Corvette Z06 with zero chance of those California Camrys getting the last upfront spot at valet. This wasn’t a case of simply turning up the boost, either; Aston claims a new block, turbochargers, induction, runners, heads and electronic control unit are among the changes.
This is all part of this “seriousness” I mentioned earlier. Talking to the Aston reps, looking at the current product offensive and driving the latest metal — the boutique British automaker is taking leaps, not incremental steps, toward improvement. Whether this is due to Chairman Lawrence Stroll’s ongoing effort to reshape and restore the brand’s prestige or the fruits of an ongoing evolution sowed earlier, it’s working.
How Nice Is the Interior of the 2026 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster?
Forget the power for a moment. Even without touching that crystalline start button on the center console, you’ll notice the new Vantage’s interior is lovely and detail-oriented. It’s an effective port-over of the larger DB12’s cockpit complete with the same fabulous controls, slim steering wheel, shift paddles, center infotainment screen and digital driver display. These last two bits are crucial; compared with the Mercedes-based system in the prior car, Aston’s newest digital architecture is quick, intuitive, lean and stylistically elegant. All of this comes in a flush dashboard display that no longer looks like a tacked-on afterthought.
That volcanic V-8 is also a carryover from the DB12 even if the engineers are quick to point out crucial differences between tune profiles. The larger, heavier, four-seat DB’s 671 hp is 15 hp more than the Vantage offers, but its thick 590 pounds-feet of torque is unchanged. Also unchanged is the mechanical guts of the ZF-sourced eight-speed automatic transmission, though the Vantage’s shift software is focused more on performance and tactility than the long-legged grand-touring blend of the DB.
According to Aston, you must contextualize the Vantage as a pure, focused sports car, not as a lush, high-performance grand tourer in the DB12 and Vanquish mold. The rich leather and fine cabin appointments mean it possesses GT properties, but the automaker imagines customer crossover with the 911 GT3 and Ferrari Roma, not the Bentley Continental GT.
