There are two types of James Bond fans: the stans who make it their entire personality, and me.
You know the type. They have a Seamaster 300M for one wrist, and a Planet Ocean for the other. They pretend to like martinis, and think shaking is the only proper way to make one. They drive, if not aspire to, some sort of grey Aston Martin with some sort of personalized plate referencing BMT 216A. How original. No one’s ever thought of that before.
I keep all that buried. I have a Seamaster, but I almost never wear it. I definitely have a collection of Bond model cars, and definitely don’t have a garage of Bond tribute cars in GTA Online, each with the “correct” plate. Most annoyingly, the 2026 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster pulls it all out and makes me want to embrace it all. I wanted to be disgusted with myself. I wanted to hate what I became; what the Vantage turned me into against my will.
But I didn’t.
Aston Martin have been on a tear lately. I wouldn’t outright say they’ve been righting their wrongs with the DB11 and second-gen Vantage, because calling those cars “wrong” feels, well, wrong. It’s just that following their golden era, from the aughts through to the mid 2010s, their cars lacked the beauty and soul of their predecessors. This phase not-so-coincidentally coincided with the infancy of their then-newfound partnership with Mercedes, perhaps leaning a bit too heavy on the Benz-ness as a result. You can’t say early DB11s have aged particularly well over the decade that’s passed, either.
The DB12 revealed to us last year that Aston Martin heard everyone’s complaints loud and clear. The DBX 707 left us floored with how well its sense of theatre meshed with fine craftsmanship and astounding performance. And this Vantage Roadster makes us forget we were even upset in the first place. For starters, it’s a lot prettier despite the grille still being rather gaping. Doing away with the thick carbon fibre grille surround and integrated splitter cleans up the look considerably. The satin silver fins and non-squinting headlights are more traditionally Aston, too.
I see a lot of DB10 up front now — much more than before — albeit with the DB12’s headlights and the crease on the tip of the nose smoothed out. It was a good-looking thing before save for the front end, and it’s now pretty much perfect. And that’s from looking at it through a screen; in the flesh, like any Aston, the Vantage Roadster hits different. It looks almost compact and right-sized in photos, but there’s a much more imposing presence to the car when you’re eye-to-eye with it. It’s low, wide, and squat, as though an ND Miata underwent the same rigorous physical training program as Double-O agents.
Beyond the front end, Aston Martin pretty much left the remaining sheet metal untouched, and the Vantage is all the better for it. It’s shouty yet unfussy, distinctive yet cohesive, modern yet unmistakably Aston — and the rear hips are obscenely sultry. It casts such a spell over you, so much so that each and every moment you’re merely in the presence of this car, you’ll hear various Bond scores playing in your mind.
The 2026 Vantage gets another round of updates underneath its sultry sheet metal. The very big deal is that the still-AMG-sourced 4.0L twin-turbo V8 gets a very generous helping of more horsepower, We’re talking 153 extra ponies, thanks to bigger turbochargers, new camshafts and cylinder heads, and a revised exhaust. There’s now a grand total of 656 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque on tap, sent to just the rear wheels through an eight-speed automatic transmission.
It sure delivers the numbers; we’re talking zero-to-100 km/h in about 3.5 seconds and a top speed of 325 km/h. You could say it’s fast, and the Vantage makes no bones about it. AMGs with this powertrain sound mean, but perhaps a little too fake. The Vantage doesn’t fall into that trap; it won’t ever sound as good as its normally aspirated predecessors, but it makes all the right snarls and cackles, and it absolutely flies like a bat out of hell.
But for all the straight-line speed and drama, the Vantage Roadster is surprisingly engaging. Aston Martin also futzed with the chassis a bit as part of the 2026 updates; they bolted on some more underbody panels, threw in a lighter and stiffer brace across the engine, and moved the front cross member a little further back for a damn-near-perfect 49/51 front/rear weight distribution.
That’s great and all, but what you really need to know is that despite falling into the modern supercar trap of being too-easy-to-drive, the Vantage is legitimately engaging and entertaining. It doesn’t use a hydraulic rack like the McLaren Artura, but the Vantage’s steering feels alive and perfectly weighted. You probably won’t pick up on the chassis tweaks right away, but the Vantage nevertheless feels composed and unflappable ripping along backroads. Best of all, because the Vantage is rear-wheel-drive, it keeps you on your toes. You’ll be wrestling the back end even in the dry. I’m so over point-and-shoot.
All that’s made even better simply by deleting the roof. Pull the switch back and hold it there for about eight seconds — pretty impressive for a power top — and you’re instantly connected to the world around you. The wind carelessly tossing around your hair and/or testing the aerodynamic coefficiency of your scalp; the warmth of the sun on your forehead; the silhouette of the Vantage’s hips in the golden hour light and the morning mist; it’s all simply made better with a snarling V8 and maybe Bond 77 — the score to the Esprit chase in The Spy Who Loved Me — piping through the 15 speakers of the Bowers & Wilkins sound system.
Like I said, I wanted to hate myself.
The vibes immaculate inside the Vantage, top up or down. The redesigned dashboard is more or less the same as the DBX and DB12, albeit locked to just carbon fibre trim. Still, it’s simply better than before; it’s better laid-out, better-looking, and better at hiding the Benz-ness now that the tech is all Aston. Both screens measure 10.25 inches and actually look like they belong. Apple CarPlay Ultra is a nifty feature that takes over most, if not all of the car’s digital real estate, but I kept it disabled for most of the week because Aston’s new, in-house infotainment is beautiful and works so well.
Below the infotainment end is a smorgasbord of physical switchgear including a dinky but beautifully knurled shifter, and the matte carbon fibre trim looks exotic even if I’d personally prefer wood. Fortunately, through Aston Martin’s colour palate and countless options, it’s easy to find something you’ll like. Or you can be boring and limit yourself to Silver Birch, Skyfall Silver, or Cumberland Grey with a black interior.
Calling the 2026 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster a special car would be selling it short — and at about $374,700 as-tested, there’s a lot to sell here. The outgoing Vantage didn’t get off to the greatest start, but with this well-timed and well-deserved update, the Vantage Roadster comes into its own and cements itself as the cool choice over any “entry level” Ferrari or loaded 911 Turbo. Hey, it took Roger Moore some time to get comfortable with the role, too.
