Aston Martin Vanquish | PH Favourite Cars 2025

The return of the King. All hail...

The latest Vanquish arrived in the UK a smidge too late last year to be included in the running for our favourite car appraisal, which was a shame for two reasons. Firstly, because it richly deserved a place in the affections of anyone lucky enough to drive it, and secondly because the weather in Yorkshire, where we shot most of the 2024 finalists, was unseasonably spectacular - all honeyed winter sunshine and cut-glass skies. The Lamborghini Revuelto I took instead, as green as Congolese canopy, looked a million bucks, of course. But honestly the Vanquish, in the right colour, might have looked better still.

This year, thanks to the summertime launch of the open-top Volante, we got a second bite of Aston’s cherry. Sadly, we did not get a second bite of the weather: rarely has south Wales been more vicious or stout-hearted photographers more drenched. We were caught in the eye of Storm Bram, and a good deal more time was spent sitting in cars staring gloomily out than driving sans roof as God (and Gaydon) intended. This accounts for the comparatively few pictures that accompany these words, though it did not on the day account for any loss of affection for the Vanquish, which, believe me, is some achievement.

In years gone by, the prospect of driving a large, convertible Aston Martin through a Welsh tempest would be about as appealing as learning Welsh. Cars like the old Vanquish were fine in small, sun-dappled doses, but it had neither the ride quality nor a sufficiently mighty grasp of its 5.9-litre V12’s output for you to relish driving it up hill and down sodden dale. Its spiritual successor, endowed with a preposterous-sounding 835hp, let’s not forget, is a very different kettle of fish. Even the presence of a Rolls-Royce Ghost on the day, with its all-wheel drive system, loftier ride height and the dissociative heft of an A380, could not tempt me from the Vanquish.

Aston will be delighted to hear that. When it launched its flagship last year, the subject of progress was a hot topic. When developing the Vanquish, the firm had its beady eye on what it viewed as the conceptual white space between the pillowy opulence of Rolls-Royce and the stringent technical brilliance of Ferrari. To get there, the old 5.2-litre unit had been field stripped and much of it thrown away. Its replacement was deemed effectively new, and purpose-built to make your head spin. With 738lb ft of torque available from 2,500rpm, it proved sufficiently showy for no one to even attempt a joke about the 80mm of additional wheelbase installed between the Vanquish’s A-pillar and the front axle. For once, its maker wasn’t compensating for anything; it was very serious about being measured against the best.

Which isn’t to say, even now, that Aston can’t do better - failure to connect to Apple CarPlay Ultra means enduring some astonishing infotainment load times; there really isn’t anywhere to put anything not shaped like a small cup or a sheet of paper; and the switch for the roof mechanism proved remarkably flaky in deciding what constituted an open (or closed) hood or the conditions it required to go from one to the other - but none of these minor niggles ever threatened to congeal into a major, experience-ruining one. And when you consider that there was hardly ever the opportunity to blow the cobwebs away in Wales with its great bellows of an engine, that felt like progress, too.

Leaving aside the burly, noughties charisma of a manual V12 Vantage S, the standard Vanquish is easily the most impressive Aston Martin I’ve ever driven. The convertible, for all the usual reasons, is fractionally less good - but that hardly limits the justification for buying one, assuming that, by deliberately not choosing the coupe, you chiefly care about a) feeling the wind nudge your fringe back, and b) showing off. Even in the wrong shade of paint on the wrong colour wheels, amid a near-permanent downpour, the Volante makes for a magnetic presence. The Met Office reckoned there were 50mph gusts atop the Brecons; it did not stop passersby risking life and limb for a picture.

In the fleeting moments of sustained toplessness, the Vanquish didn’t disappoint either. The Volante is slightly weightier than the coupe, requiring subtly different settings for its DTX dampers, yet the chassis hardware is unchanged, as is the engine calibration. The latter, unsurprisingly, hardly ever stops reminding you that the only thing more covetable than a pleasant breeze is one containing a V12 siren song. Every gargle and turbocharged gasp is a reminder that you’ve blown end-of-terrace money on a 5.2-litre comfort blanket. But lift any corner, at any moment, and you’ll find an active blast furnace underneath.

Previous experience of the Volante gleaned back in July (also in Yorkshire, somewhat ironically), suggests that Sport is the drive mode best selected when this mood takes you, it accessing a heightened level of responsiveness without needlessly subverting the Vanquish’s admirable compliance. But, again, the passing maelstrom served not just to highlight the flagship’s talent for tugging at your heartstrings - something previous models, the DBS Superleggera included, were already adept at - but rather its roundedness and unthreatening usability up to that point.

Aston has consistently reiterated that the car’s default ‘GT’ setting was intended to live up to its name, implying that not everyone - hardly anyone, potentially - wanted so much horsepower relentlessly on tap, all the time. Instead, it wanted owners to be able to sit back and relax. And not just to harmonise with the road surface like a Rolls-Royce might, but to locate their natural flow state well inside the 835hp theme park, without tiptoeing around a menacing back axle. Few, admittedly, would go looking for it in a named storm, but the fact that you can do that in the Volante, and find it without effort, without feeling guilty for leaving so much power untapped, is possibly the most revealing measure of the Vanquish’s greatness - not to mention the wider journey Aston is on. If the new Valhalla outdoes it next year, the targeted promised land surely beckons.

SPECIFICATION | 2025 Aston Martin Vanquish Volante

Engine: 5,204cc, twin-turbo, V12
Transmission: 8-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 835@6,500rpm
Torque (lb ft): 738@2,500-5,000rpm
0-62mph: 3.4 seconds
Top speed: 214mph
Weight: 2,005kg (EU unladen)
MPG: 20
CO2: 21g/km
Price: c£400,000)

Honourable mention | Mercedes G500

Had it not been for Aston’s V12-powered bruiser, a Mercedes might very well have finished atop this year’s Christmas tree. The GT 63 E Performance, for example, proved that rare thing: a genuinely likeable hybrid - albeit with a V8 and 816hp. But as the point of the annual PH gongs is to reward personal favourites, I tip my hat instead to the G500 we tested back in January. That some people find the G-Class objectionable is understandable based on its asking price and colossal weight, but the fact is that with a petrol 3.0-litre straight-six, the more affordable version dispenses with the antagonistic qualities of the G63, and gets on with the job of being a modern G-wagen. And in 2025, when you’re required amble almost everywhere, that turns out to be a very pleasant way of getting around.