2023 Aston Martin V12 Vantage First Drive: The Long, Fast Goodbye

By the end of this decade, Aston Martin's 5.2-liter twin-turbo V-12, originally launched in 2016 under the hood of the DB11 coupe, will have driven into the history books, strangled by ever increasing emissions and fuel consumption regulations. But the 2023 Aston Martin V12 Vantage shows the engine is not going gently into that good night. It rages, transforming Aston's entertaining entry-level sports car into a scintillating supercar.

With 690 hp and 555 lb-ft of torque under its dramatically reprofiled hood, the 2023 V12 Vantage is the most powerful Vantage ever built, boasting almost a whole Honda Civic's worth of extra grunt (163 more horses, to be precise) than the 2022 Vantage F1 Edition and 125 more horses than the gorgeous, previous-generation V12 Vantage S. It's the quickest, too, with a claimed 0-60-mph acceleration time of 3.4 seconds, and the fastest of the current Vantage lineup, with a top speed of 200 mph.

The 2023 V12 Vantage is more than just a simple engine swap. Revisions to the suspension include a new adaptive damping system, revised bushing, and stiffer front top mounts. Overall body stiffness has been increased with additional front and rear sheer panels, a rear suspension tower strut brace, and fuel tank bracing.

Its track has been widened 1.6 inches, and spring rates have been increased 50 percent at the front axle and 40 percent at the rear, while the front stabilizer bar is 5 percent stiffer. The rear stabilizer bar is 41 percent softer, and an additional spring with a lower rate than the main spring has been added to ensure ride comfort without compromising dynamic performance.

Standard wheels are 21-inchers shod with 275/35 Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires up front and 315/30 items at the rear.

Twelve cylinders and two turbochargers generate a lot of heat in an engine compartment originally intended for a V-8. That explains the full-width, rear-facing vent on the redesigned hood, the redesigned front bumper framing a 25 percent larger grille, and the larger vents in the redesigned fenders. Other visual changes over the regular V8 Vantage include large, single-piece side sills extending from the fender vents, a new rear bumper with an integrated diffuser, and central twin exhaust outlets.

The dramatic rear wing, whose softly contoured form echoes that of the rear wing on the Aston Martin AMR22 F1 car, isn't just there to impress your buddies at Cars and Coffee: It's been designed to work with the new front splitter to create 450 pounds of downforce at 200 mph.

At first glance the big V-12 fills the Vantage's engine bay. But then you notice there's still a gap at the front of the car. Little more than an inch of the engine, which weighs significantly more than the 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 in the regular Vantage, extends over the front axle centerline, which explains why the front to rear weight distribution has shifted only marginally from the V8 Vantage's perfect 50/50 to 52/48 in the V12 Vantage.

Aston's engineers haven't just relied on the V-12's abundance of power and torque to deliver improved performance over the V-8-powered Vantage. Weight saving measures include 16.1-inch front and 14.2-inch rear carbon-ceramic brakes that remove 51 pounds of unsprung mass, a stainless-steel exhaust that's 15.8 pounds lighter than the regular Vantage system, and carbon-fiber hood, front fenders, rear decklid, and front and rear bumpers. Lightweight forged alloy wheels are available as an option, saving a further 17.6 pounds.

As such, despite weighing 3,957 pounds, the V12 Vantage enjoys a 20 percent better power-to-weight ratio than the 476-pound-lighter V8 Vantage F1 Edition, until now the most powerful car in the Vantage lineup. And you can feel it, though not quite in the way you might expect.

Next to the growling gut-punch you get from the F1 edition's AMG-sourced V-8 at what seems little more than idle speeds, the V12 Vantage's engine initially feels curiously languid, even though its higher peak torque (555 lb-ft versus 505 lb-ft) is being produced at lower revs—1,800 rpm versus 2,000 rpm.

It's perception rather than reality, amplified by the different power and torque characteristics of the two engines. V-12s, even turbocharged ones, like to rev: While the torque output of the F1 Edition's V-8 begins to taper after 5,000 rpm and its power peak comes at 6,000 rpm, the V-12 holds on to its maximum torque until 6,000 rpm and makes its peak power at 6,500 rpm.

You'll occasionally notice a touch of turbo lag if you punch the gas hard below 2,000 rpm, but once everything's spooled up, the acceleration shoves you hard back into the seat as the horizon rushes toward you.

The weapons-grade thrust from 3,000 rpm to 6,000 rpm means this Aston is astoundingly fast on any road, compressing time and space between corners as only a car with almost 700 hp can. Yet, this is no hardcore, racer's edge ride like, say, a Porsche 911 GT2 RS; there's a velvety edge to the V12's snarl and a surprising compliance to the ride—even with the suspension in the stiffest of its three settings—that makes it feel almost like a gran turismo. A gran turismo on steroids.

It's fast on the track, too, even on its road-optimised tires. The giant carbon-ceramic brakes deliver unquenchable stopping power. The front end responds to the meaty steering with calmness and authority, despite the extra weight over the front axle, and the mechanical limited-slip differential deftly funnels all that power and torque to the tarmac when you get on the gas.

There aren't many 700-hp, rear-drive road cars in which you can confidently switch off the traction and stability controls on a track after only a handful of laps, but the V12 Vantage is one of them. Yes, it has a lot of power, enough to smoke the rear tires almost any time you want. But the sensitivity of the throttle and the clarity of the feedback through the chassis is such that you can feel exactly where the limits of adhesion are and modulate your inputs accordingly.

Will it drift? Of course. But what makes the V12 Vantage so much fun on the track is that you can drift it more like Sebastian Vettel than Ken Block, more subtly and with much higher absolute corner speeds.

Track time exposes the one weak link in the V12 Vantage's performance arsenal: the eight-speed automatic transmission. As automatics go, the ZF eight-speed used by Aston Martin is a benchmark, but when you start to push the V12 Vantage, the upshifts feel laggy and downshifts woolly, even in Track mode. It only takes a couple of laps to understand that the mighty V-12 demands the crisp precision of a dual-clutch transmission.

Aston Martin is building just 333 copies of the V12 Vantage in all, with just over 100 destined to arrive in the U.S. from the second half of this year. And every single one of them is already sold, despite a price tag that starts at about $300,000.

That's because the 2023 V12 Vantage is destined to be a classic Aston Martin. There won't be another small Aston with a V-12 under the hood, and the engine itself is unlikely to stay in mass production beyond 2026 or 2027. The V12 Vantage is the beginning of the long goodbye. Fittingly, it's a fast one.