Aston Martin Vanquish Volante 2025 review – Ferrari 12 Cilindri Spider rival impresses

‘Best Aston Martin of the last 25 years.’ So said John Barker, editor-at-large, evo founder, and a man who knows a thing or two about engineering cars, when he filed his copy for our Vanquish coupe review. Of course, it’s always a bit of a worry when the roof is removed in the name of alfresco motoring to create a convertible or, in the case of the Vanquish, a Volante. 

Thankfully the days of floppy afterthoughts when it comes to convertibles based on closed-roof cars are a thing of the past, predominantly due to improved materials and manufacturing techniques, but also engineers and designers working far more harmoniously with each other rather than trying to make each other’s working life a misery. The Vanquish Volante was designed, engineered and developed alongside its coupe sibling and it shows in the way it feels so in tune with the road and how it encourages you to explore the performance it has to offer.

Engine, gearbox and technical highlights 

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There’s certainly plenty of that to go round. Its 5.2-litre twin-turbocharged V12 matches the coupe’s 824bhp and 737lb ft of torque, the latter available from 2500rpm and yours to do with as you will until 5000rpm when it starts to tail off. And then the colossal power takes over for the final run to the red line. It’s not a V8 screamer, but it revs with a potency unexpected of a turbocharged twelve, with a crisp reaction to throttle inputs throughout the rev-range and across all eight ratios stacked in the ZF automatic gearbox.

Leave the transmission in auto with the drive mode left in the default GT setting and the downshifts can, on occasion, hesitate as the software determines if there’s enough torque on tap for the next throttle opening or if it needs to drop a gear lower, but you need to be pushing on to experience it. And if you are going along at such a rate, chances are you’ll be in Sport mode where the immediacy of the shift – both up and down – matches the sharpness of the V12’s response. For a car of its size and bulk, the Vanquish Volante isn’t shy of being hustled in the sort of way you might ask a Vantage to behave.

Talking of size and weight, the new model tips the scales 95kg heavier than its coupe equivalent, resulting in a 1869kg dry weight, therefore pretty much two tonnes with the vital fluids required to actually drive it. Seriously, car manufacturers, what’s the point in quoting a dry weight? What’s next? Quoting the weight of your car without a gearbox? Maybe stop including the weight of the seats, too – they’re pretty heavy now with all the motors, cooling fans and heating elements. And breathe… 

Performance, ride and handling

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Despite the mass, the Volante still manages to deport itself exceptionally well. The Bilstein DTX dampers have been recalibrated to acknowledge the slight rearward shift in weight distribution (now 49:51 front to rear), with the geometry settings for the double wishbones at the front and the multi-link set-up at the rear optimised too. The standard Pirelli P Zero is the same bespoke tyre developed for the coupe. 

Across some pretty poor British road surfaces, the Volante breathes with impressive fluidity, wheel travel controlled to isolate shocks before they reach your hands but without robbing you of feel (all helped by the 27kg drop in rotating mass through the fitment of carbon-ceramic brakes as standard). The Sport damper mode can be a little rough-edged for some surfaces, adding an extra frequency of noise to the car’s ride, but the added body control will be, for some, an acceptable trade-off. 

> Aston Martin DB12 Volante 2025 review – Britain’s Ferrari Roma Spider rival

Making progress across a moorland road, the Volante remains impressively calm, its body controlled and the ride precise in its vertical movements, the steering accurate and linear whether you’re pouring it through a curve or tipping it into a hairpin. You only ever need to dial in a single movement and it reacts with a level of precision and an alertness that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Vantage.

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There’s an e-diff in the back of the gearbox to not only help on corner exit but entry too, acting as quasi rear-axle steering to help keep the nose tucked in and the rear where you need it to go. Were it not for the wind-rush troubling your hairline, you’d be hard pressed to know you were in an open car. With the roof closed, and with its exquisitely trimmed headlining, it’s only the letterbox-style rear window that gives the game away that you’re actually in a convertible. 

As with the coupe, the Volante straddles the GT/supercar threshold, as does Ferrari’s 12 Cilindri, but the convertible Aston doesn’t have the theatrics of the poster-car genre. It’s much calmer, more subtle in how it conducts itself, both at speed – 214mph flat out, 3.4 seconds to 62mph according to the official figures – and when playing the GT role. 

> Aston Martin Vantage Roadster 2025 review

Stretching the V12 to its peaks requires space and some confidence in your own abilities, as momentum builds relentlessly but also almost without drama, the V12’s soundtrack strangled by legislation even with the K-fold roof stowed away (leaving the rear carbon cross-brace in view). It’s one of the few criticisms of the Volante, and Aston Martin can do little about it beyond offering an optional – and 10kg lighter – titanium exhaust; even then the boosted soundtrack is muffled by the law-makers. 

Interior and tech

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With such sumptuous surroundings, inside time in the Volante is time well spent regardless of your speed. There’s a sense of occasion that only having a big V12 ahead of you and a 21st century Aston Martin chassis beneath you can bring. A few foibles are carried over from the coupe in terms of Aston’s own HMI but the availability of Apple CarPlay Ultra reduces your engagement with the flawed in-house system. 

And there’s no real luggage space now the roof occupies much of the void, so road trips will require the roof to be closed. Or your luggage sent on ahead. Not that you’ll care, because you’ll be driving one of Aston Martin’s very best. 

Price and rivals

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The Vanquish Volante will cost you upwards of £390,000 by the time you've decided on your spec. That's a lot but a match near enough for its one key rival in the Ferrari 12 Cilindri Spider. Both are so equally matched in terms of their dynamic and performant talents, though with disparate characters. Picking between them is a matter of brand loyalty and taste. 

Before long, Lamborghini should introduce a Roadster variant of its Revuelto as a more extreme alternative on the supercar end of the spectrum, while the Bentley Continental GTC Speed is an enormously fast, capable and sumptuous GT car resolved to an outstanding standard.

Specs