Road Test of the Year: Aston Martin Vanquish Volante

Got your Top Trumps cards ready? Good, because we’ve got a car that’ll beat most others in the number stakes.

It’s the Aston Martin Vanquish Volante and it’s a car which comes with a dizzying number of figures. Under the bonnet we’ve got a 5.2-litre twin-turbocharged V12 engine which sends 824bhp to the rear wheels through an eight-speed automatic gearbox. Torque? That’ll be 1,000Nm. Zero to 60mph, you ask? Pah. Just 3.2 seconds. Oh, and the small matter of the price? That’ll be in the region of £360,000, or more if you fancy some extras.

But why is it here in the crucible of motoring, which is Road Test of the Year? Well, for starters, in a field of electric vehicles and SUVs, it’s something to still have a V12-powered supercar on the roads. In 2025, with ever-tightening emissions and EV-only targets, these combustion-engined monsters are starting to feel like an endangered species, which is why the Vanquish Volante was greeted with more than a bit of adoration when it first swept into a gritty lay-by in our south Wales location.

It’s a striking thing, mind you. Aston has always had a knack for draping metal over metal to create something beautiful and we’d argue that it has done it again with the Vanquish Volante. At the front, there’s more than a hint of the latest Vantage to it, while at the rear, you can see little influences of the limited-run Valour and Valiant.

That said, it quickly became apparent that the specification of this particular Vanquish Volante doesn’t sell its design features all that well. The inky shade of blue selected for the exterior seems to lose many of the car’s finer details, and with a variety of gloss black elements dotted here, there and everywhere, it can start to look a little one-dimensional.

Alright, so we’re over the looks – but what about the rest of the Vanquish Volante experience? Fold that roof down – it’s a clever ‘Z-fold’ fabric one which takes 14 seconds to close or 16 seconds to open at speeds of up to 31mph – and you’re immediately changing driving scenarios. With the roof down, the Vanquish plays the role of the classic cruiser, weaving through bends with agility before firing down the straights.

There’s performance as and when you need it, in pretty any gear you’d fancy. Scream along in second? It’ll provides superbike-rivalling thrills. Fancy rolling on that wave of torque in a higher gear instead? The Volante never feels out of its depth.

If anything, the Vanquish is an example of modern cars simply being too powerful; as a petrolhead, it’s hard to admit, but something with this much power is almost superfluous out on the road. One hefty press of the throttle and you’ll quickly be having a chat with plod. Stay committed to the throttle and you’ll soon be staying at His Majesty’s pleasure.

With that V12 engine sitting beneath the long, stretched-out bonnet, it’s easy to imagine the Vanquish Volante whisking you down the south of France and, in many ways, it’s this train of thought which puts a fly in the Aston’s ointment.

It’s a big car, you see, and on the smaller roads we’re trying out in this part of Wales, the Vanquish’s sheer size makes it feel more cumbersome than others here. In the wet, you do need to be a little more aware of all 1,000Nm of torque threatening to send you spinning elsewhere. In the end, you tend to start driving more slowly than you might in something like the Alpine A110 – particularly when the weather is being quite, well, Welsh.

You can’t fault how special it all feels, though, and how well thought-out mechanically it is. The throttle feels sharp despite the engine’s heavy use of turbochargers, while the brakes give you the confidence you need when driving in conditions like this. It’s even fitted with Apple CarPlay Ultra – a brand-new system which puts all of your key smartphone apps in the binnacle right ahead of you – though sadly it didn’t want to play ball with us during our time with the car.

The V12 engine also feels quite muted. There’s no cackle from the exhaust and, on some occasions, it sounds more akin to a far smaller-capacity engine. There are turbo boost whistles and squeaks, of course, but it’s not quite what you expect.

The Aston Martin Vanquish Volante feels like a technological marvel. It’s hugely powerful and, in this day and age, we’re pleased to still count a V12-powered, drop-top supercar as a member of the RTOTY gang for this year. But on Welsh roads, in the days of early autumn, it feels just a little too large and cumbersome to completely come out on top. For sure, there’s little that can get in the way of the drama and head-turning appeal that Volante brings, but we’re left feeling as though the Vanquish might need the longer, sweeping roads of the warmer parts of the continent to fully shine.