The 2025 Aston Martin Vanquish blends cutting edge engineering with the timeless appeal of its V12 predecessor. In this review, we compare the latest model with the original, exploring design, performance, driving dynamics, and technology. Explore its key specifications, pricing, and standout features that make the 2025 Vanquish a true luxury sports car icon.

There were just three of us on that perfect, perfect day. Dan, Olgun and me. We were on a road I first visited in 1989 in a Ferrari Testarossa, my first big supercar job. My second was in 1992 in a Jaguar XJ220, with a side of Ferrari 512 TR for good measure. Look at Olgun’s incredible images and you might wonder why we don’t come here all the time.

But we tend only to visit when in need of a setting to do justice to the looks, power and purpose of the cars we have with us. Three people, two Astons, one road and, for once, no sheep. Barely a cloud in the sky, nor other motorists to be seen. We got lucky, and in this business, that happens sometimes on those rare but perfect, perfect days.

The original Vanquish. Actually, ‘V12 Vanquish’ if we’re being picky. A car was launched before it was finished. That happens too. Car manufacturer gets on the wrong end of the balance sheet, needs product to turn a financial one way street into a dual carriageway, so it goes to market before the car is ready. Think 996-generation Porsche 911, think McLaren MP4-12C. Think first Aston Martin Vanquish.

The irony, of course, was that it had already been delayed by new boss Ulrich Bez, who pronounced his Vs as Ws, to the delight of the assembled press corps when he made the announcement. The car would only be launched when it was ready. But the ‘ready’ original Vanquish was far from it, the blame falling largely at the door of its slow, clunky six-speed robotised manual gearbox which would slyly change from first to neutral at traffic lights, leaving you with a V12 bouncing off the rev limiter when you tried to pull away and much mirth for the small crowd of onlookers the car always seemed to attract.

You can see why. At the time, I lived in a tiny cottage in Wales and remember waking up one spring morning, wiping away the condensation from the bedroom window, seeing it there below me, wreathed in early morning mist and thinking that right there on my own turf was one of the most beautiful sights I would ever see.

Its ability to induce sharp intakes of breath remains undimmed. I was unkind enough to ask its creator (and Ti contributor) Ian Callum whether he preferred the Vanquish or the DB7 upon which his reputation was made, aware it was like asking someone to say which of their children they liked more. He didn’t hesitate: ‘Vanquish,’ he told me. ‘It’s just so much braver.’

To me, it is no less pretty than the DB7 but has the muscularity the earlier car lacks. This car comes right from the other end of the production run, which lasted from 2000 to 2007. It’s an S, which is the one you want, with just 23,000 miles on the clock and for sale now at Aston Martin Works in the same Newport Pagnell facility where it was built, for £79,950. All day long, we drove it in the way such a car should be driven, and it never even looked like it was missing a beat.

The surprise, and I mean this in an entirely positive way, is that the brand new Aston Martin Vanquish 2025 parked next to it doesn’t look awkward in any way. No it’s not as beautiful, but usually an even pretty good looking car can suddenly seem rather inelegant when the original is one of the all-time great shapes: deposit an Alpine A110 next to its 1960s namesake and you’ll see what I mean.

This doesn’t happen with the brand new, £330,000 Aston Martin V12 Vanquish. It looks great. A proper Aston Martin. Gun to head, I prefer the DB12, but when I first saw the Vanquish in a studio and was asked what I thought, I found myself making words like ‘striking’ and ‘interesting’ do more than their fair share of the heavy lifting. Which is why I never make judgements about cars seen only under artificial light. Seen where it’s meant to be seen, the new car looks fabulous.

Despite the years that separate them, the job of today’s Aston Martin Vanquish V12 is precisely what it has always been, even when going by its former DBS nom de plume. And it’s a very particular thing. The job description was actually first written in 1977 when the company produced a Vantage version of its V8 coupé. If you want weapons-grade bluffing, refer to it as the ‘Oscar India’ followed by ‘but of course that term only applied to cars built after October 1978’. (I could explain why it was so called and the subtle upgrades it entailed, but Dan’s going to be prepping this test for publication, would rightly regard it as entirely irrelevant to the story and discard it to the cutting room floor.)

But it was Britain’s first 170mph car and starred in tests alongside Italian exotica such as Lamborghini’s Countach and Ferrari’s Berlinetta Boxer, plus the inevitable Porsche 911 Turbo, but it really wasn’t like any of them. No V8 Vantage, DBS or Vanquish was ever the fastest car in a straight line or around a corner. But nor are they simple Grand Tourers because there’s always been another Aston in that role, be it the non-Vantage V8, DB7, 9, 11 or 12. So not supercars and not GTs either. So let’s call them super-GTs, cars that aim to combine as much of the thrills and performance of the former with as much of the latter’s long-distance civility as it can muster. And both these Vanquishes share precisely that brief.

The older one comes with an ignition key, but you still thumb a button to fire it up, though not before pulling both paddles to select neutral. Because while as discussed, this generation of Vanquishes became known for selecting neutral without telling you at traffic lights, they also selected first when you killed the engine, presumably because there was no ‘park’ and the fly-off handbrake was not to be trusted. The starter motor turns so slowly I thought the battery was about to die but, no; it’s just what it does. Fresh off the truck as it was, I sat there for a while waiting for some temperature to percolate through its 5.9-litre V12 Aston Martin engine.

It’s a bit of a mechanical hotchpotch, its engine originally being designed for a Ford concept car (check out the 1996 Indigo) with a chassis done on the QT by Lotus, Aston Martin no longer having the engineering capability in house to develop such an advanced car by itself. And advanced it was, with a sophisticated bonded aluminium chassis (with a carbon fibre backbone) using similar technology to that already well understood by Lotus thanks to the Elise.

Philosophically, it’s the way Aston Martin V12 Vanquish models are still built today, because the approach provides not only an extremely structurally rigid platform, but a highly adaptable one too, which can be stretched, shrunk and otherwise adapted according to need. It’s not massively light or space efficient, but what production Aston ever was? Yet this is also the last Aston Martin to have been assembled in Newport Pagnell, the factory to which the company moved from Feltham in 1958. I love the fact that its panels are superformed, which really was cutting edge at the time, then finished by a man with a hammer. So it was, in very real terms, the bridge between Aston Martin’s past and its future.

If you’re in the market, do go the extra not-so-few quid and get an Aston Martin Vanquish S. Everyone talks about the raising of engine output from 460bhp to 520bhp and the consequential hike in top speed from 190mph to, quiet at the back, 201mph. But far more significantly, later Vanquishes had updated programming and hardware for the at times truculent gearbox.

The Vanquish S made standard the ‘Sports Dynamic Package’ introduced as an option on the 2003 Vanquish, a year before the S arrived. Featuring uprated suspension, steering and brakes, the car was not just faster but, crucially, better to drive too, making the extra cost worth considering when comparing the Aston Martin V12 Vanquish price.

The cabin is really looking its age now. The dials with their yellowy background and quaint serif font look out of place (DB7 clocks are far nicer and in keeping), while the central ‘waterfall’ is as dated to look at as it is awkward to use.

But this is a magnificent cockpit, all fine leather, glossy carbon fibre and attractive information screens that are actually reasonably intuitive to use. It’s worth noting that this generation is a strict two-seater, while (entirely useless) rear chairs were an option on the original. Sitting there with this vast bonnet stretching out ahead and away is like watching the curvature of the earth from 40,000ft.

It is, of course, derived from the same platform as the DB12 and current Vantage, but stretched by 80mm between the A-pillar and front axle to accommodate the 5.2-litre twin-turbo V12, an engine still related (albeit by some distance now) to that in the old Vanquish. In this iteration, smaller, more efficient turbos have raised power from the 760bhp of the previous DBS Superleggera to 824bhp, while torque is ‘only’ 738lb ft because that’s the limit of what ZF’s eight-speed automatic (note, not dual-clutch) gearbox can handle.

To cope with all that power, the track has been widened, the suspension revised and carbon ceramic brakes fitted as standard. What you’ll not find is a four-wheel steering system like those used by Ferrari or Bentley on their flagship super-GTs. Instead, you’ll find what Aston Martin calls its ‘six axis’ stability control that takes a holistic view of the car’s behaviour and, working in conjunction with its electronically controlled limited-slip differential, adjusts not just the diff settings but the dampers and braking system too, using torque vectoring to minimise understeer on entry.

But, you will be thinking, all this comes at some hideous price, and in financial terms you’re absolutely correct. Yet when it comes to its mass, not so much. It’s quite hard to find a nailed-on kerbweight for a 2007 Vanquish S, but the most consistent figure I’ve seen is 1875kg. So you’d think it’s bigger, massively more powerful, turbocharged, pumped up descendant with all that feature content and safety systems installed would be two tonnes and plenty more besides. But it’s not. It weighs just 1910kg, a 45kg penalty for an over 300bhp gain.

Manoeuvring the old Vanquish a few inches this way and another few that to position it for a photograph is like being told to waltz with your granny when you’re 13. Awkward’ barely covers the stilted, uncertain movements that result. It’s that dratted gearbox again.

But soon we’re off and over the mountain. The driving position is slightly odd – I’m sat too high and there’s no relevant control on the seat, and the steering wheel has a poor range of rake and reach adjustment, but in the context of what we’re doing this is no great tribulation.

Of more concern is not that first impressions are mixed, but almost exclusively negative. There’s a distinct jerk every time you change up and while the ride is actually pretty good, it feels uncertain about how to approach corners, restless on its springs until they’re under decent compression, then the same again as the energy departs the chassis at the exit. And perhaps most sad, it just doesn’t feel that fast any more. Sorry about that. Drive an old Vanquish as I just did, minutes after emerging from a couple of hours in the new car, and with that as your point of reference, it will not fail to disappoint.

So I got back into the new one and repeated the exercise. It wasn’t so much that it was faster – though it was and wildly so – but the ease with which it did absolutely everything. It’s so well tied down, so sure of itself you find yourself never using an inch more road than envisaged, which with a large car moving fast on a quick road is precisely what you need.

What’s more, that balance spoken about in yesterday’s piece that a super-GT must find between possessing the performance of a supercar with the character of a Grand Tourer has been masterfully struck, which is not to say it’s plumb in the middle, of which more later. Aston Martin says the car is designed to work best on the road in its default GT setting, and it’s absolutely correct. The ride is not pillowy which would be completely inappropriate – in fact it’s quite firm – but with damping that rounds the edges off every sharp impact there’s never a hint of harshness, let alone discomfort. Scrolling through Sport and Sport+, I realised I’d actually like greater distinction between each mode, but forced to settle for one, I’d choose GT or possibly Sport, but with the dampers set to soft.

The engine is truly remarkable, but not perfect. What is delightful and somewhat breathtaking is the way it is able to change its personality. Once on song above 2500rpm it does the effortless GT thing as if born to it, surging forward, the Aston Martin Vanquish V12 extemporising on the hoof; it is masterly and it is magnificent. What you’ve not told your passenger is that, so far, you’ve only used two-thirds of the throttle travel. Bury it and it becomes something entirely different, an awesome, pumping, roaring, thumping powerhouse of a motor, daring you to see how long you can maintain the pressure on the pedal. It’s not long, but goodness it’s fun while it lasts.

Even so, the 2025 Aston Martin Vanquish is simply too fast even for one of Britain’s best roads, if you define ‘too fast’ as meaning a level of performance you are unable to unleash for more than a handful of seconds at a time, though I accept it’s not exactly alone in this regard. And it comes at a price. I noted when I first drove the DB12 that it had an off-boost lethargy which put down to its high specific output and comparatively low compression ratio. Yet it’s here too, despite the Vanquish squishing its mixture rather harder, its extra capacity, lower number of horsepower generated per litre of displacement and new small, quick turbos. Though it sounds mesmeric at times, the engine is more docile than I’d like a super-GT to be in that range immediately above idle, and when the turbo boost does arrive the change from not much to almost too much is rapid to say the least.

The chassis is similar: for the most part brilliantly realised, but with just one area that could do with improving. I couldn’t care less whether it has more or less grip than a mid-engined rival, because there’s enough that only a lunatic would unstick it in the dry on a public road. I love too that one of the reasons it’s not even heavier is that, like Ferrari and unlike Bentley, Aston Martin accepts the traction limitations of powering only the rear wheels for the benefits it brings, and relies on advanced traction control to balance this. And one of the company’s greatest achievements with this car is how much of its torque can be used how much of the time. Traction is limited, yes, but nothing like as much as you might reasonably expect from a car of these capabilities.

Moreover, it is beautifully damped, with accurate, sensibly geared and well weighted steering, supremely poised and completely unflappable. There’s a corner on the road, a right-hander which you turn into fast while going over a crest at the same time: it is the ultimate chassis leveller and the 2025 Aston Martin Vanquish barely noticed it.

And yet you can feel the additional length of the wheelbase, and the weight of the V12 in the nose making it fractionally front heavy, while a DB12, for example, puts the majority of its weight over its rear wheels. It’s not much but I’d like a slightly sharper turn in even than that provided by the e-diff and torque vectoring. Four-wheel steering would provide this, and at least the weight penalty would be at the right end of the car.

Perhaps I had been too swift to judge. So we agreed to give it another go and, this time, not rush it. Before we even set off, I thought about the engine and how it breathed, the gearbox and how it worked, the chassis and how to coax it into doing its best. And in that moment, this car became something else.

Job one: rev it. This old Aston Martin V12 Vanquish doesn’t develop peak torque until 5800rpm, only 700rpm before the new car develops peak power. So use it. Let it sing at full throttle. And goodness me, does it like to do that. Its howl is not quite so multi-faceted and animalistic as a 1960s Ferrari racing V12, but for something that started life in a Ford, it gets closer than you could possibly imagine, thanks in part to its distinctive exhaust systems. It makes the car fast too, by modern standards, with no apology or qualification needed. I remember Dan stepping from it after his first proper run and murmuring, ‘didn’t expect it to feel that quick…’

The gearbox. All you have to do is remember it’s a manual. You wouldn’t powershift a Vauxhall Corsa, so why do it to an Aston Martin? Lift off and pause for exactly the same period you would were you changing gear yourself and it does so flawlessly. Downshifts are even better, crackling through with genuine rapidity so long as it’s spinning the motor up to a decent speed.

There is no special technique you can deploy to make the chassis behave differently, but that’s good news because it means all you have to do is give it time.

No, it has nothing like the composure of the modern 2025 Aston Martin Vanquish, and the only surprise would be if it did. Its manners are a bit scruffy around the edges, but so are mine. You just need to learn to trust it, go with it and relax. And while it wouldn’t see which way its grandchild went over such a road, it’s actually more involving to drive because it needs an element of consideration and management. Less impressive for sure, but no less memorable and, as a driver, not much less rewarding, though for entirely different reasons. The key difference is that the new one is so fast and capable that it feels hemmed in on the road, even one as glorious as this. The old car, though, with its far more limited potential, is able to run free.

It’s been a fascinating day, one that will live long in the memories even of those as lucky as us. What I wanted to know was whether the new car, for all its power and pace, was still positioned in the same conceptual space as the old and I have to conclude that it’s not All issues of raw ability aside, the new Vanquish is very close to being a true supercar, with a chunky side order of GT. And I get that: when you have in the DB12 a GT of such deep and broad capabilities, it’s simple commonsense to put a greater distance between them.

But mind blowing though the Aston Martin Vanquish 2025 can frequently be, it is the DB12 that remains the best production Aston Martin I have driven, the sweetest spot in a now delectably sweet range.

 So now you’re expecting me to explain why I also prefer the Aston Martin Vanquish V12 car but, in fact, it’s not quite like that. For all its visual charm, despite the genuine joy it is capable of delivering once you’ve figured out how to drive it, it is a car that demands you adapt your driving style to accommodate it, and while that presents an interesting challenge to which I enjoyed rising, the usual reason why I often prefer originals to descendants is that they’re so much lighter, which is not the case here. And the truth is that while the old Vanquish V12 cannot quite deliver on the promise of its knee-trembling appearance, the new one can and does, with space to spare, every time you climb aboard.

I’m not sure we should have a winner here because we are hardly comparing like with like, but the new Vanquish is an even greater achievement in 2025 than was the original at launch in 2001 (and even when developed into the S). What’s more, it provides additional proof, as if it were needed, that the Aston Martin range of today is the best it has been in the storied 112-year history of the company to date.

Read our Aston Martin Buyers Guide here.