I’ll never own an Aston Martin and that’s fine. I don’t need to physically have the car in my garage in order to think it’s pretty. The new 2021 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster, gorgeous with its tan interior and blue paint in these press photos, is wonderful to look at and apparently has a slick-folding top.
Joining the Vantage coupe that was launched two years ago in 2018, the Vantage Roadster also has the 4.0-litre, twin-turbo and AMG-sourced V8 that puts out 510 PS (503 horsepower) and hooked up to a ZF eight-speed automatic. It’ll hit zero to 60 mph (97 km/h) in a claimed 3.7 seconds, according to the press release, and achieve an estimated top speed of 190 mph with the roof up. Additional weight over the coupe comes to 60 kilograms.
The hood has a Z-fold mechanism that can apparently be lowered in 6.7 seconds or raised in 6.8 seconds when the car is travelling up to speeds of 31 mph (50 km/h).
I still think the soft-top Mazda Miata and Fiat 124 Spiders’ manual roofs are the best—and can certainly be lowered and raised in far less than seven seconds. But I don’t expect Aston Martin drivers to blow-dry their own hair, much less manually lower and raise their convertible tops. Time is the price of laziness here.
The Vantage Roadster starts at $US161,000 ($238,864) in the U.S. First deliveries are expected to start during the second quarter of this year. Everyone should get that tan interior.