2025 Aston Martin Vanquish First Drive Review: V12 Super Tourer Extraordinaire

The 2025 Aston Martin Vanquish does many, if not all, things brilliantly. But the thing you all likely care most about is what’s under the hood. Somebody go check what year it is because Aston has fitted its new flagship GT with a thoroughly reworked 5.2-liter twin-turbo V12—no hybrid motors, no all-wheel drive, no rear seats, 824 horsepower.

This hand-assembled car’s very existence as a 2025 model-year vehicle is a feat in and of itself and Aston even says its V12 will be around “until at least the end of the decade.” Remember when we all thought EVs would be mainstream by, like, 2030 because The Governments all said they’d be? It’s incredible what you can accomplish when you’re a boutique automaker who really only has to answer to one billionaire Netflix villain with a seemingly unlimited budget and a desire to go fast. Really fast.

The Basics

As a thing, the Vanquish is a grander DB12 in both the figurative and literal sense—it’s 80 mm longer in between the front axle and A-pillars to accommodate those extra cylinders. Style-wise, it’s a stunner.

A bigger grille, One-77-style headlights, F1-inspired hood louvers, 21-inch forged bronze wheels that tickle my inner BBS fanboy, and a tasteful use of carbon fiber come together to make the Vanquish one of the best-looking cars being made today. That carbon panel on the Cyclops rear end, by the way, can be finished in body color for a more traditional look while little protruding bars make up the taillights, a bit like you got with the Vulcan.

The outsides of the doors and the sides of the body are made of carbon fiber to cut down on weight, but my favorite carbon bit may just be the side strakes behind the front wheels that say “Aston Martin V12” with “V12” in red to let you know it means business. Those are just cool, there’s no other way to put it.

Inside, it might look a lot like the DB12’s cabin, and key controls are indeed shared, but Vanquish feels a step more special thanks to additional carbon frames underneath the touchscreen and flanking the instruments. Knurled alloys, tan leather, designer cheese grater speaker grilles, and restrained use of chrome look, feel, and smell expensive. Just like every other current Aston, Vanquish is also a car that’s easy to get along with. A proper infotainment system developed in-house features wireless Apple CarPlay and accompanies plenty of hard buttons and scroll wheels scattered across both the center console and steering wheel. Fifteen speakers from Bowers & Wilkins sound and look great, in case you ever get sick of listening to what lurks under the carbon hood.

The seats are supportively plush, the driving position feels correct, and the steering wheel feels satisfyingly meaty to hold onto. The standard full-glass roof is always transparent but rocks a 6% tint and an anti-UV coating to keep the cabin from becoming an oven.

As an item, all of the Vanquish’s parts add up to a car that feels properly fancy and properly special. In true Aston Martin fashion, though, that pomp and quality doesn’t feel like overkill or gauche, sidestepping the trap of overdesign. A fair amount of $430K supercars are designed to be obnoxious and the Vanquish isn’t one of them.

Driving Experience

Until, perhaps, you fire it up. A fire-breathing 5.2-liter V12 with two turbos may have also powered the outgoing DBS Superleggera, but Aston says the one in this Vanquish is practically “all-new” because the bore, stroke, and V-angle are apparently the only carryover elements.

A stronger cylinder block helps the engine breathe better than before. The connecting rods are also new and incorporate reprofiled camshafts. A new intake and new exhaust ports join a revised water jacket in the cylinder head. The spark plugs have been repositioned while higher flowrate fuel injectors have been fitted. Smaller, low-inertia turbos spin quicker for better performance and throttle response while a new exhaust manifold improves catalyst heating. A new Boost Reserve function accumulates boost pressure in the background under partial throttle only to be unleashed when the gas pedal meets the floor.

And unlike the Lamborghini Revuelto, there’s no hybrid system to speak of, not even a 48-volt mild unit. On the same token, it isn’t quite as pure as the naturally aspirated Ferrari 12Cilindri, but I dare you to drive the Vanquish angrily and come away complaining about its forced induction.

Let loose on a long, empty stretch of Sardinian highway, the Vanquish is, and there are little other words for it, fast as fuck. Zero to 60 mph in 3.2 may not sound all that special in 2024—the Nissan GT-R did the same time in 2007 and I don’t recommend egging on any serious EVs between the lights. But from-a-dig acceleration is not where this thing excels. It’s all about in-gear acceleration.

It’s how quickly it gets from, say, 50 to 80 mph. It’s what happens after 100 mph. After 120. And, dare I admit to it, how quickly 150 arrived, and how much more it undoubtedly had to give beyond that. Alas, given enough room and bravery, the Vanquish will reach 214 mph, making it the fastest, most powerful “series production” Aston Martin road car ever made.

Stomp on the gas while already in motion and the Vanquish is manic. Twelve cylinders, two turbos, and over 800 horses fill your ears with lead, making them pop with pulse-altering, license-ruining forward thrust. It is oppressive, remarkable, excessive, wondrous speed. It somehow doesn’t feel dangerous though. Aston has tuned the V12 to dole its torque out in a manner that will thrill the billionaires who buy this but stop short of killing them. It needs them around and alive enough to buy the next V12 Aston Martin, after all.

Standard carbon ceramic brakes are almost 60 pounds lighter than cast iron and provide stopping distances comparable to the Vantage. A new Corner Braking 2.0 system predictively maintains stability while trail braking by using more of the rear brakes, allowing for later braking. Track-speed stopping distances and trail braking behavior require, y’know, a track to truly evaluate, but we didn’t have access to one for this first test. But what I can tell you from driving the Vanquish on the road is that the brakes do indeed work, and work quite well.

A rear-mounted ZF eight-speed automatic transmission also does its thing well when left in auto—Sport mode is ideal for keeping the engine on-boil for spirited road drives—but isn’t ultra-quick-shifting when using the paddles. An electronic rear limited-slip diff introduces itself here for the first time in a V12 Aston Martin and helps the Vanquish negotiate corners like a much smaller sports car, which it does astonishingly.

It’s agile and almost darty on the switchbacks and feels wonderfully stable negotiating fast, sweeping bends. The steering feels spot-on in terms of weight, ratio, and feedback for a car that does double duty as a comfy tourer and a canyon carver while the chassis feels light yet unwaveringly robust. Bespoke Pirellis grip hard while rocking a fair amount of sidewall for a better ride.

Speaking of, calm the Vanquish down and it’s quite a good cruiser, too. Bilstein DTX dampers also seen underneath the Vantage and DB12 (Aston definitely got a bulk discount on these) are tuned with a comfort bias here and are indeed reasonably Comfortable. It’s not as sumptuous as, say, a W12 Bentley (RIP) but that car can’t hustle as hard as this, either.

The Early Verdict

Perhaps this is a foregone conclusion considering its price and placement in the Aston Martin hierarchy, but among the three current front-engine sports cars from Gaydon, the Vanquish is firmly my favorite. In my mind, it’s the only one that truly delivers on the company’s promise of a “super tourer.”

Supremely well-rounded and well-balanced between comfort and sport, it’s somehow more supple and usable to me than DB12 while still evoking the spirit of the Vantage, being thrillingly, entertainingly agile on a backroad. As an item, it also feels, looks, and sounds a helluva lot more desirable and special than either of its stablemates.

As a Normal, however, the Aston Martin Vanquish is also a car that makes me a bit sad. Because not only does it start at $429,000, Aston is only making, at most, 1,000 units per year, two-thirds of the number of DBS Superleggeras that were made. So, to the vast majority of people, the Vanquish is one of those cars that lives merely as an idea.

But when that idea happens to be a two-seat, unelectrified V12 Aston Martin that looks, drives, and excites as good as this, we’ll take all the ideas we can get.

Got a tip or question for the author about the Vanquish? You can reach him here: chris.tsui@thedrive.com