Article by:
William Walker
Aston Martin would love it if you forgot, or at least revised, a few things you think you know about it. Yep—that James Bond scene you just popped into your mind, and images of Grand Touring, too. Today’s Aston Martin wants to be more than that. It wants to be known for its sports cars. It wants to move into rarefied competition on the streets with the McLarens and Ferraris of the world, just like it does on the Formula1 circuit. The new 2025 Aston Martin Vantage is proof positive of this new philosophy. “Engineered for real drivers” (emphasis added) as the company puts it. This heavily revised Vantage is stiffer and more powerful than before and retains the classic beauty and comfort Aston Martin is known for. To be clear, Aston doesn’t call the Vantage itself a supercar, but the company wants the model to help it move toward the world’s most preeminent supercar makers. There is, however, another obstacle on this path: Porsche.
Porsche doesn’t compete in F1, but it knows plenty about big-time racing—with more wins, for instance, at the 24 Hours of Le Mans than Ferrari, McLaren, and Aston Martin combined. As far as road cars are concerned, the German manufacturer already has a car—the 911—that does just what Aston hopes to do in terms of performance. It has long been the default choice for well-heeled enthusiasts looking for a car that’s as comfortable commuting during the week as it is carving up canyons or racetracks on the weekend. It’s a driver’s car that delivers an exceptionally engaging experience without much in the way of compromise.
The new 2025 Porsche 911 Carrera GTS T-Hybrid is proof positive. Quicker and more efficient while being a bit heavier than the version it replaces, the new GTS packs serious punch. Aside from the usual long list of Porschenyms (PDCC, PASM, PCCB, PDK), the car’s new hybrid powertrain is key to what makes it work. Designed purely for better performance (the aforementioned efficiency boost is a side benefit), it pairs a new 3.6-liter flat-six engine with a small frunk-mounted battery and both an electrically driven turbocharger and a small permanent-magnet motor hidden in the car’s eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission’s bellhousing, for total peak system outputs of 532 hp and 449 lb-ft of torque. The “how” of it all is fascinating, but we care less about that in this context and more simply about how it makes us feel up against Aston’s latest.
Make no mistake: When it comes to the Aston, you dismiss Gaydon’s latest at your peril. Aston Martin did its homework and applied it well to the 2025 Vantage. Faced with the loss of its homegrown 690-hp V-12, the company asked its Mercedes-AMG partners for more from the M177 V-8. Thanks to larger twin turbos, a compression-ratio boost, new cams, and improved cooling—aided by the Vantage’s striking new nose—power from the boosted 4.0-liter V-8 rises hugely from 503 hp and 505 lb-ft to 656 hp and 590 lb-ft of torque, paired with an updated eight-speed ZF automatic. Aston also heavily reengineered the Vantage’s hardware and software to take full advantage of the newfound power. It stiffened the chassis and suspension mounting points, fit the car with adaptive hydraulic dampers, improved its electronic power-steering rack for more immediacy and feel, and upgraded the optional carbon-ceramic brakes (which, like the Porsche, our test car was equipped with). On the software side, a new electronic rear differential pairs with a new “active vehicle dynamics” stability-control system to boost driver confidence and the car’s performance in tandem.
Is that all enough for the 2025 Vantage to leapfrog the Porsche 911 GTS into the upper echelon of supercars? We investigated three categories to find out.
It doesn’t seem like a fair fight on paper: The Vantage outguns the 911 GTS T-Hybrid by 124 horses and 141 lb-ft, boasting 5.9 pounds per horsepower versus 6.8 pounds per horsepower for the Porsche. And yet in every single instrumented test we conducted, the rear-engine, rear-drive 911 reigned supreme. The Vantage’s 3.4 second 0–60-mph run is impressive in a vacuum, but the 911’s 2.6-second best is simply staggering for a rear-drive car—making it the seventh-quickest rear-drive car we’ve ever tested, behind contemporaries like the Corvette Z06 Z07 and McLaren 720S, the most recent 911 GT2 RS, and hypercars like McLaren’s P1 and Ferrari’s LaFerrari and 296 GTB Assetto Fiorano.
The 911 GTS’ quick start helped it hang onto the lead in the quarter mile, posting a 10.7-second time at 129.7 mph. The new Vantage, like other Aston Martins, is at that point just beginning to find its second wind—posting an 11.2-second time at a faster 132.0 mph. Aston says it’ll go on to reach a 200-mph top speed compared to the Porsche’s 194 mph. Who doesn’t enjoy bragging to their friends and family that their car can hit the big 2-0-0?
This paradigm continued to play out in the rest of our testing: The Vantage posted impressive figures, but the 911 GTS just accelerated quicker, braked harder, and cornered with more average g. You can find the whole breakdown in the chart at the end of this story.
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Yes, objective testing data is important, but the way cars like the 911 GTS T-Hybrid and Vantage make you feel is a hugely important point. After all, neither serves what anyone will objectively call a pragmatic purpose. No, they’re about pure passion, smiles, and fun.
The Aston Martin claws back much ground here, even before driving an inch. Shorter, wider, and lower than the 911, it is simply stunning to look at. At one unscripted moment during our photoshoot, photographer William Walker and executive editor Mac Morrison simultaneously said to no one in particular, “Damn, that is a great-looking car.” Classically proportioned with a long hood, Coke-bottle hips, and a short rear deck, it has the presence—especially in this radiant green paint—of an even more expensive vehicle than its already spendy $264,300 as-tested price suggests. The new interior Aston fit to the 2025 Vantage cements that feeling, with rich leather, a beautiful mix of materials, a surprisingly snappy homegrown infotainment suite, and a general air of “I made it.”
Somehow, the Vantage is even better to drive than it is to look at. Its updated engine deserves much of the credit. It’s a bit bewildering at first hearing what’s so clearly a Mercedes V-8 barking out of the Aston’s tailpipes. But considering even the king of England has German ancestry, you get past it quickly. Besides, there’s no denying Mercedes has mastered the high-performance twin-turbo V-8, with the hot-vee setup helping to the Aston deliver its power linearly, thus making it incredibly easy for you to modulate the throttle properly.
Almost incredibly, the Aston’s power is accessible to the driver thanks to a chassis and steering team that worked together well with the company’s software engineers. Up front, the coupe’s nose lacks the lightness you typically expect from a British sports car, but it still responds quickly for a front-engine car. There’s a hint of understeer to be had here if you overdo it on corner entry, but the Vantage is easy to correct and bring back in line, thanks to easy-to-modulate brakes and a torque-vectoring rear axle that rewards drivers who like to steer with the gas pedal. Brand loyalists worried about losing the comfortable ride Astons typically have, fear not. Though firmer than before, the new Vantage rides well even in its most aggressive damping setting, and it isn’t upset easily when on-power over pockmarked pavement.
This is the type of setup that might at first seem intimidating but gets better and better as you build your confidence and realize how much performance and grip is available. This isn’t the type of Aston that will easily step out and embarrass you.
If we have a nit to pick, it’s with its eight-speed automatic. The transmission generally makes smart decisions when left to its own devices, amping its upshift aggressiveness in Sport Plus or Race modes and letting the manic V-8 run to its 7,000-rpm redline. However, its downshifts can be slovenly in those same drive modes, sometimes seeming to “forget” to downshift when coming hard into a corner, bogging the engine as we wrapped around the bend. The car’s paddle shifters help somewhat here if you go for manual actuation, but even then, the Vantage wasn’t always as responsive to downshifts as we’d have liked.
The Porsche presents a stark contrast. For many, if you’ve seen one 911, you’ve seen them all. That’s somewhat fair to say with our Guards Red Sport Design-package-equipped GTS. Though the new 911 Carrera GTS T-Hybrid sports some subtle visual and functional changes, they’re of so little consequence that only Porschephiles will really notice—or care—especially after driving it.
Regardless, it is, in a word, fantastic. First the familiar: Like all recent 911s, this new one is as rewarding at its driver’s limit as it is at its own. Its chassis, steering, suspension, and tires all speak constantly to you through the pinpoint-precise steering wheel and seat bottom, seeming to tell you exactly where you stand on the performance envelope. The brakes too, are phenomenally effective, with near-instantaneous response and plenty of stopping power.
You need it, too, because the GTS T-Hybrid’s powertrain is why-haven’t-we-been-doing-this-for-years good. The little 53-hp motor in the PDK’s bellhousing provides instantaneous forward thrust while a separate motor spins the turbocharger up to 120,000 rpm and the engine takes over. The result is explosive yet smooth acceleration that feels like it never falls off boost, even occasionally overwhelming the rear tires like 911s of yesteryear. And try as we might to find any hybrid weirdness here, there is none—if Porsche hadn’t told us about its “T-Hybrid” system, we’d have been none the wiser to its existence other than information displayed about it on the instrument cluster. Everything in the 911 GTS is immediate and organic—happening right now, feeling ever so slightly quicker than the Vantage does. The new 911 GTS experience, combined with the insanely quick dual-clutch transmission and the car’s pure poise is so good that we struggled once again to wrap our minds around how Porsche keeps improving the 911 generation after generation.
This isn’t typically part of our comparison tests, but these aren’t your typical cars, either. Every Friday morning like clockwork, the abandoned parking lot of Newcomb’s Ranch deep in Los Angeles’ San Gabriel mountains fills with the sorts of cars enthusiasts dream about. A cars and coffee event in and of itself would normally be insignificant, but the “Good Vibes Breakfast Club,” as it’s known to the regulars, isn’t an experience hosted by a brand interested in selling its wares. It’s an organic community car gathering held miles deep into mountains away from civilization, along one of Angeles Crest Highway’s hundreds of curves, filled with everything from Detroit muscle to JDM imports to mid-engine Italian exotics. These would be the perfect people for our final test: curb appeal.
Again, purchasing a $200,000 car is an emotional choice. Our cars, whether we like it or not, tell the world a little about us and what our interests are, just like a Yankees hat, Prada bag, Carhart jacket, or cowboy boots might. To boot, it was quite interesting to witness the impact these cars had on fellow enthusiasts.
“The Vantage is so much sexier than the 911,” one Toyota Supra owner said. This quickly became a common sentiment. “I’m a Porsche guy, but I will say Aston is making some of the best-looking cars,” a 996 911 Turbo S owner commented. Another offered, “It looks like a $250,000 missile in a suit. It’s ungodly rowdy for no reason.”
Yet even while acknowledging the Aston’s sheer beauty, others predicted the Porsche might be the better driver. A Honda S2000 owner thought the 911 would be easier to live with. As someone else put it, the GTS is just a “tighter-looking car; it looks ready to rip through the canyons.”
But it was a Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing owner who really dropped some enthusiast-in-the-street wisdom on us: “I always feel every sports car wants to grow up and be the Porsche.” When asked what Aston needs to do for the Vantage to be considered in the same class in this enthusiast’s mind, he spread some advice we could all probably apply in one form or another to our personal lives. “The Aston’s a little heavier, very comfortable, has lots of power, but it’ll never be the 911. It doesn’t have to be. It’s in its own class, and it’s probably at the top of it...Read more
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