Aston Martin Vantage Roadster - sports car loses roof and gains a new name

Aston Martin has launched the latest member of its growing model line-up - the Vantage Roadster.

Two years after the latest Vantage Coupe hit the roads, the Roadster replaces the familiar Volante name-tag for Aston’s convertibles and brings an al fresco addition to the family while retaining the hard-top’s mechanicals and performance.

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Priced from £126,950, the two-seater uses the same 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 as the coupe, sourced from AMG and tuned in-house by Aston Martin. As with the coupe, it’s mated to an eight-speed ZF automatic gearbox.

With the same 503bhp/505lb/ft output as the coupe, the Vantage Roadster can go from 0-060mph in 3.7 seconds and on to a top speed of 190mph with the roof up. That’s just 02.mph and 5mph down on the fixed-roof version.

The Roadster boasts the world's fastest-operating automated convertible roof (Photo: Aston Martin)

The hood is a fully fabric affair and features a new lightweight powered Z-fold mechanism that can be lowered in 6.7 or raised in 6.8 seconds at speeds of up to 31mph - making it the fastest automatic convertible system in the world. With it folded, the Roadster’s boot is a snug 200 litres - still big enough, says Aston, for a golf bag and accessories.

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To compensate for the roof chop, the Roadster features chassis revisions and strengthening, plus alterations to several body panels in order to preserve its dynamic abilities, adding a relatively small 60kg to the coupe’s weight.

A selection of new options for the Vantage are being launched at the same time as the Roadster (Photo: Aston Martin)

The coupe’s adaptive damping, dynamic stability control, torque vectoring and electronic rear differential have all been specifically retuned for the Roadster. Likewise, the Coupe’s Sport, Sport + and Track chassis modes have been retained but adapted for the new model.

The introduction of the Vantage Roadster sees a range of new options introduced across the Vantage range. To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Vantage name, Aston Martin is introducing the company’s iconic ‘vane’ grille as an alternative option to the track-inspired ‘hunter’ grille that has featured on the coupe since its launch in 2018. That’s available on both coupe and roadster along with a range of optional alloy wheel designs in a choice of finishes.The coupe can now also be optioned with a seven-speed manual transmission previously only fitted to the AMR special edition.

The convertible is just 0.2 of a second slower than the coupe to 60mph (Photo: Aston Martin)

This article first appeared on The Scotsman