Topless New Aston Martin Vantage Roadster Bows

Gaydon-based supercar-builders Aston Martin has rung in the New Year by going topless – all puns intended. Revealed earlier today is the new roofless Roadster variant of the marque’s latest-generation Vantage supercar.

Visually, the new Vantage Roadster shares an identical design with its Coupe twin, though it is marked out by a revised front end design sporting a larger grille plus a slight 30 MM increase in width.

The new Aston Martin Vantage Roadster is marked out by a lightly revised front end featuring a larger grille, and it also sits some 30 MM wider too.

Obviously, the biggest difference here from said Coupe it underpins is its new ‘z-fold’ roof. Unlike a traditional ‘k-fold’ roof mechanism, Aston Martin claims this new assembly is lighter and operates quicker too – it takes just 6.8 secs to retract or deploy, says the firm.

Interestingly, said ‘z-fold’ roof also boasts no less than eight layers of insulation. In turn, this ensures that when the soft-top is up, things remain no louder inside this Roadster’s cabin as it does in its hard-topped coupe twin.

Aptly, with the roof chopped, Aston Martin added reinforcements elsewhere in the chassis plus a new rollover system. This explains why, at 1,665 KG (dry), the Roadster is 60 KG heftier than the Coupe, with Aston Martin citing that it modified the rear end with “weight-optimised” shear panels.

Aston Martin says the 'z-fold' roof mechanism is both lighter in weight and quicker in operation versus regular 'k-fold' assemblies. Said roof also has eight-layer insulation that promises low noise.

Aston Martin also emphasised both the Vantage and Vantage Roadster were apparently designed in tandem instead of the traditional route of developing the Coupe first before lobbing off its roof for the Roadster. Apart from the changes noted, both variants share pretty much everything else.

Included too is the beastly 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 powerplant plonked up front sourced from Mercedes-AMG. It still makes the same 656 HP and 800 NM outputs,  allowing the Roadster to despatch 0-100 KM/H sprints in just  3.6 secs – just 0.2 secs slower than the Coupe.

For perspective, the new Vantage Roadster’s performance matches the outgoing V12 Vantage Roadster model – the most powerful open-top model ever produced by Aston Martin with a claimed 690 HP output.

Said mill also continues to come paired with an 8-speed automatic supplied by ZF that’s been tweaked slightly but still sends all power and torque to the rear wheels. Other notable bits include optional massive carbon ceramic brakes and bespoke-tuned Bilstein rear adaptive dampers present.

Under the hood, the Vantage Roadster continues to harness the same Mercedes-AMG-supplied 4.0-litre V8 twin-turbo mill outputting 656 HP and 800 NM, allowing this drop-top to despatch 0-100 KM/H in just 3.6 secs.

On board, things again mirror the Vantage Coupe. As a refresher, Aston Martin debuted an all-new cabin design here sporting a 10.25-inch touchscreen, wireless smartphone mirroring, plus a slew of buttons, switches and dials for frequently used and accessed functions.

Typical of Aston Martin, prices for the new Vantage Roadster wasn’t revealed at first, though UK-based sources are reporting a starting price figure of roughly £175,000 (approx. RM962,374.20). This makes the Roadster some £10,000 (approx.  RM54,992.81) costlier.

For reference, the Vantage Coupe was launched locally last year with a base price of RM2.37 million. Expect the Roadster to launch locally with a slightly higher starting price tag too.