I get this letter from Morries Aston Martin on special service offers and was thinking, maybe take my car while in storage to the dealer now that Minnesota has spring weather and no snow to save a ton of money on the annual for the 'special offer'. To get this offer one must go to their website and apply to get a coupon. So I go to the dealer, forgetting my I-Phone (to show the coupon) and the printed coupon, and they asked to see the 'coupon' to apply the discount. The next day with the 'coupon' in hand, I went back to the dealer so they could look up the 'special pricing' which is something apparently from Aston Martin Corporate. Well, seems like the 'special offer' with a printed coupon was a whopping $0.00 dollars off the annual service pricing. WTF! Anyway, Morries said they would try to come up with something of a discount, but no call back from them yet. Not sure what marketing person at Aston Martin thought of making people click "Get Offer', then print a coupon, them make someone physically go to a service department to discover the offer when there was none - how that helps customer relations and satisfaction.

So, I found out the new Vantage has 656HP, about 600 lbs. torque, has the DB12 interior (mostly), loaded with the standard features of the DB12 (supposedly), and heard it's about $200K. With some of the exterior changes to get back some of that elegance, all in the right direction. My first Vantage was bought new in 2007 from Lake Forest Aston Martin, custom ordered with the first production Aston Vantage with wood door caps (see below) and a 5 year extended warranty paid up front for about $150K out the door. Taking inflation into consideration that's equal to $220K in today's $$. So, the new Aston would have 42% more power, all the latest safety features included like the DB12, back up cam, likely same or better fuel economy, for essentially the same or less price than my first Vantage.

 

Never seen a Vantage with the wooden door caps! Thanks for sharing. Lovely color combo.

 

The burr walnut became an official option after I commissioned them (only $2,995.00). My mistake was a two tone leather AND the caps... too much going on (too busy). The option was never published and dealers had to know to offer the option. Aston Works said wood door caps would not work because of the hard bend, and a day later they responded that burr walnut could make the bend.

 

I'm generally not a fan of wood on the interior at all, but that honestly looks remarkable.