I picked up my new Vantage a couple of months before the pandemic struck. I've used the car almost daily but I haven't been able to take any road trips in it at all. Things have gotten much better here in California and I decided to take a 3 day trip up to Mammoth Mountain to do some late season skiing. I've skied at Mammoth since I was a kid. I know the mountain like the back of my hand & late season is great fun (even in this lousy snow year!). The drive is just under 400 miles from my house in Santa Barbara. The route is mostly 2 or 4 lane highways crossing coastal Avocado groves, 3 mountain ranges, a large desert area and an alpine zone at the end. The route follows the Owens Valley which has a 8000 foot escarpment along the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. Spectacular. The roads are lightly travelled, generally with a speed limit of 65 mph, but with little or no enforcement. Most people go 80-85 mph.

The car really acquitted itself well on the drive and as a road trip car really shows up my old 991.2 911S. The seating is perfect and the layout of the three pedals is perfect. The combination of engine, handling, gearbox and ride is almost perfect too. The car feels less like a sports car and more like a GT when cruising on the straights and sweeping curves. There were spots where I hit 110 mph without even noticing. I drove almost always in 6th gear and the car pulls like crazy from as slow as 50 mph. The rear boot swallowed my ski boots, and all my clothes, gear. The car is really flexible that way. I averaged 21 mpg on the trip.

I'm really happy I finally got to "use" the car for more than nipping around Santa Barbara. It is a pleasant surprise how comfortable and fun the car is. I understand the new Vantage has it's detractors but as a driving tool it is un-paralleled.

 

Great to see these cars being used in the way they were intended to be used.

 

Beautiful car! I was looking at a manual vantage..noticed a few left over AMR still for sale..can’t quite understand why they are still on lot? Was an amazing car when I drove one...had a 488,2017 manual v12 vantage S, 991.2gt3 manual etc and this was a stand out!

 

will be doing my second cross country (bay area to central ohio and back) this summer sometime. looking forward to it with the new boots (pirelli p zeros's). waiting for warmer weather in the rocky's...
BTW, there's a back road starting out just north of bakersfield going to lake isabella (route 155, i think) that's a hoot. i followed it a few years ago on a round-trip back east on my honda st1300. great fun!

 

Highway 178. It is a great road. I was a bit off of my route for this trip as I was really focused on getting from Santa Barbara to Mammoth as directly as possible.

 

Seriously? How about they are butt ugly (in and out) and they’ve got someone else’s motor under the bonnet. They are just another car.

 

ummm how about they are the only non American V8 manual you can buy new and rumors are they are only a 2021 run for the manuals...btw amg sources pagani engines bro lol..

 

i've got plenty of fomoco/volvo parts on my 2007 vantage and the engine block is supposedly a jaguar developed 1997 vintage AJV8, so the merc engine is not a problem. i just don't like turbos.

 

Not sure why all the hate for the new vantage. I think it is a beautiful car with gorgeous lines. I know the front grille may not be for the "tradionalists", but it's not like what bmw did to the new m4. That is a travesty. BTW the merc engine is awesome. Just my 2 cents.

 

Take this car, with the 7 speed manual, on an 800 mile road trip across mountains and deserts on broad sweeping highways and then offer a criticism. It compares very favorably to the 911. Who cares where the engine comes from. As mentioned above name another foreign V8 offered with a manual & more to the point I’d take a Mercedes engine over the Ford and Volvo bits in the earlier cars. Aston is a small company and has always needed outside help. The new Vantage drives and feels nothing like similarly engined AMG offerings.

 

You have a manual trans? Very nice!

The newer Vantage is admittedly a bit of a financial stretch for me (I'm guessing they're going to drop to around 70k before the depreciation slows down), but I like naturally aspirated engines and the old school interior of the previous generation more. That said, you can software tune and modify the turbos on the Mercedes engine to get a higher rev limit and a more NA feel, so I don't really consider the MB engine a bad thing. It's certainly got more R&D behind it than any proprietary Aston Martin engine. My main complaint about the new Vantage is the digital screen, I wish they kept the impractical but beautiful analog dials from before.

Do you find the ride harsh like the Youtube reviews say? More stiff than a Porsche 911 S?

 

yes the old gauges are beautiful but impractical. i can hardly read them in the bright sunlight. and the digital gauge is miserably dim too. half the time i have to guess how fast i'm going. but then again i've been known to date high maintenance women with questionable personality traits for their good looks alone and consider it a worthwhile tradeoff... *shrug*.

 

Via - great trip...I have done many trips to mammoth/Yosemite/Tahoe from bay area and below is a pic taken from Tioga pass...great to see you are enjoying your car!

 

Beautiful!

 

The ride is much more compliant than my old 991.2 911S. I think the 51/49 weight distribution has something to do with it. My 911 always sort of bounced on long distance highway trips and it got a bit tiring. The Vantage felt like a pair of comfortable loafers..... Except the car bites nice and hard when you hit a curve. The digital screen isn't so bad. You certainly have all the information you need right in front and it is easy to access. The car overall feels very analogue.