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The Aston Martin V12 Vantage Is Coming Back With Michelin PS4S Tires

Penned by Henrik Fisker and Ian Callum, the 2005 Vantage opened Aston Martin to a wider audience. Four years later, the company stuffed a free-breathing V12 where the V8 used to be, creating a very different car.
2023 Aston Martin V12 Vantage test mule 57 photos
Photo: Stefan Baldauf / SB-Medien
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Redesigned on the Second Century bonded aluminum platform, the 2018 Vantage adopts a twin-turbocharged V8 engine from Mercedes-AMG with more than 500 horsepower on tap. Aston Martin already offers the twin-turbo V12 from the DB11 and DBS Superleggera in the stupendous limited-run V12 Speedster, but in the not-so-distant future, the Vantage V12 will come back with no limit on how many units the British automaker will make.

Spied by the carparazzi on the most grueling racetrack of them all, the prototype adopts a dual-piped center exhaust system, a Gurney flap on the rearmost edge of the rear deck, widebody flares that house Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S rubber shoes, a massive front grille, as well as vents in the hood.

The five-spoke wheels with a double-spoke design wrap very wide tires out back, namely 325/30 by 21-inch units. Despite the silky-smooth ferociousness of the force-fed V12 hiding under the hood, Aston Martin has curiously decided to run this mule at the Nurburgring with steel brake discs.

Considering that every Vantage in the lineup is up for a redesign in 2022 for the 2023 model year, a few exterior traits may change from this prototype to the series-production vehicle. We should also look forward to almost 700 horsepower and tons of tire-annihilating torque, although we don't know exactly how much.

If we take the V12 Speedster as the yardstick for the V12 Vantage, then look forward to 690 ponies and 555 pound-feet (752 Nm) at 5,000 revolutions per minute. The DBS Superleggera, by comparison, is currently rated at 715 horsepower and 664 pound-feet (900 Nm) at merely 1,800 rpm.

On that note, don’t expect a good ol’ manual driving the rear wheels. Under the leadership of executive chairman Lawrence Stroll and former Mercedes-AMG head honcho Tobias Moers, the British company is abandoning three-pedal setups in favor of torque-converter automatics and DCTs.
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About the author: Mircea Panait
Mircea Panait profile photo

After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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