The V8 Vantage is a hand-crafted sports car that offers electrifying performance and outstanding agility. The most affordable of all Aston Martins, it fuses traditional Aston Martin style and everyday usability. The result is the world’s most desirable sports car.

At the heart of every great sports car is a great engine; and in the case of the Aston Martin V8 Vantage, this has never been more true. The V8 Vantage has a powerful 4.3 litre 380 bhp engine, unique to Aston Martin. Developed for flexibility as well as outright performance, the front mid-mounted V8 also delivers an outstanding aural experience, as one would expect of an Aston Martin with a potential maximum speed of 175 mph.

The Aston Martin V8 Vantage is a very fast sports car. With 0-60 mph in 4.9 seconds and a potential maximum speed of 175 mph, its performance figures are as heady as you would expect of an Aston Martin.

This V8 engine has been specifically designed and developed for the V8 Vantage. Hand-assembled at Aston Martin’s new, purpose built engine facility in Cologne, Germany, it is a light, compact, all-alloy unit – high-performance, yet responsive even at the lower end of the rev range. Its maximum torque is an impressive 302 lb ft at 5000 rpm, 75 per cent of which is delivered at just 1500 rpm – barely more than idle – making the Aston Martin V8 Vantage extremely tractable and great fun to drive.

The V8 Vantage is very much a pure sports car, so the Aston Martin engineers’ priority from the outset was to focus on light weight, compact size, agility and power. At just 172.5 inches (4.38 metres) long, not only is it the smallest model in the Aston Martin range and one of the leanest cars in its class, but it is light, too, and very nimble.

The V8 Vantage could not be anything else but an Aston Martin. It is a modern shape that bears a direct lineage to some of the great Aston Martin models of the past, such as the Aston Martin DB2 – praised at the time as ‘one of the most beautiful cars in the world’ by Motor Magazine in April 1950 – and its successors, the DB2/4 and DB4. They were not just handsome, but very fast sports cars that were also immensely practical and could be used every day. Just like the V8 Vantage.