Aston Martin’s Muscular Vantage Is a Combination of Sophistication and Aggression
4 min
Aston Martin builds all of its cars with a peak blend of performance and luxury. Still, their six-figure creations can lean more aggressively into one side or the other of that simple recipe.
For example, the DBD707 SUV hides a 4-litre V8 engine capable of 697 horsepower, but its overall size and endless creature comforts nuzzle a little closer to luxury’s embrace. The small-batch Valour muscles up on the performance scale with its prized manual transmission and 5.2-litre, 705 horsepower V12 power plant. Meanwhile, the recently redesigned DB12 is the company’s best attempt at splitting the performance-luxury gambit right down the middle.
Amid all of those supercar machinations, the Aston Martin Vantage sneaks away to play as the most performance-centric car coming out of the Gaydon, England, factory. Redesigned for 2025, the US$191,000 coupe reasserts itself as the most dedicated “driver’s car” in a very driver-friendly line. Should this be in pounds first?
During a road drive and speed testing event at Spain’s Circuito Monteblanco about an hour outside of Seville, the new Vantage proved itself as Aston Martin’s most accessible track-day companion.
A first look at the latest addition to its very elite Warwickshire family pulls the eyes right to the newly extended rear wells that jut out around 21-inch, forged alloy wheels. While widening the car’s haunches, the wheel positioning reduces unsparing weight and gives the new Vantage a much more athletic pose.
Beyond that muscular base, the Vantage continues the modern Aston Martin styling tradition of riding the razor’s edge between aggression and sophistication. While the car’s Italian and Swedish rivals opt for prominent fins and big scoops, Aston’s designers keep the lines low, wide, and balanced from the signature highlighted grille to the understated aerodynamic spoiler.
In the performance specs department, the Vantage now packs an AMG-built, 4.0-litre, V8 twin turbo, front-mid mounted engine, capable of 656 horsepower, and a top speed of 202 miles per house and a 0 to 60 mph time of 3.4 seconds.
According to James Owen, Aston Martin’s senior manager of Vehicle Engineering, if the DB12 is the automaker’s distinguished overachiever, the Vantage is its less responsible, but equally attractive pugnacious sibling.
“The DB12 is a sports tourer and is positioned in the market as a GT,” Owen says. “It’s important for us to differentiate between Vantage and the DB12—to make sure that difference is clear for buyers and enthusiasts”
Owen describes the larger, pricier DB12 (starting MSRP of US$245,000) as more refined, while he considers the 2025 Vantage as playful and passionate. He even uses the word “brutish,” if such a term can be used for a technology-stuffed, six-figure sports car.
“The word that we keep hearing when talking about the Vantage is ‘fun,’” Owen adds. “That’s what we wanted to hear. We wanted to create a car that pulls at the heartstrings because it’s so enjoyable to drive. But, we wanted it to have a challenging character to it.”
Previous versions of the Vantage fit that punkier image. While always built for speed and powerful acceleration, the last couple editions of the Vantage were a little more harsh. The steering seemed more aggressive—demanding more input from the driver. The suspension felt tighter, deliberately transmitting more of the road’s surfaces and imperfections into the driver’s backside. If any current car in the Aston Martin line is a direct descendant of the automaker’s racing pedigree at Le Mans or in F1, it’s the Vantage.
Still, amid all this talk of driving fun and racing performance, Owen is quick to remind drivers that the Vantage is still an Aston Martin— steeped in the company’s signature identity of sophistication as the grownup’s more dignified supercar.
“The Vantage also has that added feature in its wheelhouse,” Owen explains. “Yes, it will respond to a driver pushing it in a racing scenario, but—with the technology we built into the car to stabilise the body at its most comfortable driver mode settings – the Vantage is still a very pleasant place to be.”
In keeping with such pleasantness, the interior of 2025 Vantage bears no resemblance to any race car. Handmade and stitched Haircell Leather stretches in all directions in any colour the buyer prefers. The Sports Plus Seats are 8-way adjustable with heat or cooling on demand. The complete infotainment suite featuring the official Aston Martin Audio system from Bowers & Wilkins is a step up from the previous Vantage (and the current DB12).
Once the internal comforts and engineering feats come together, the experience behind the wheel is a sensual union of car and operator. Acceleration is smooth, yet immediate. The cornering is focused and nimble, and its rear-wheel drive allows for just enough play for the occasional drift at speed in turns.
A key piece of Aston Martin technology makes the Vantage’s elite performance potential accessible to more drivers. The ESP System (Electronic Stability Programme) debuted in the DB12, and the Vantage adopts the tech to its driver mode system. ESP takes information from multiple sensors around the vehicle, feeding the accelerometer data into a computerised concept of the car’s driving conditions and the ability of the operator.
Resulting algorithms react to those conditions, road surface issues, available grip, etc., tightening up the vehicle where necessary to aid the driver and offer as much feel and performance as the given operator can manage.
In its completed package, the 2025 Vantage is aimed at a specific buyer demographic—the driving enthusiast who puts thrills ahead of all-out creature comforts.
“For each project at Aston Martin, we have a customer profile in mind,” Owen says. “They have defined interests that highlight their demographic. For the Vantage, we consider a buyer who is perhaps new to the brand and looking into the ‘entry level’ Aston Martin. That’s a buyer who isn’t concerned with having a backseat or the DB nameplate. He or she thinks performance first and foremost.”
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From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
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