Aston Martin V12 Vantage S Offers Seven Speeds, No Waiting
Doug DeMuro presents one final look at the Aston Martin V12 Vantage S before new Vantage gives the manual the boot.
The new Aston Martin Vantage is ready for the decade to come, with all-new styling, bright paint colors, and a Mercedes-AMG-sourced twin-turbo V8. Oh, and an eight-speed ZF automatic ready to take that power to a pair of rear-driven Pirelli P-Zeroes.
But what if you still want total control of your Vantage? Like, a Vantage where can you go to row your own gears. Doug DeMuro knows of such a paradise. In his latest video, DeMuro takes us through a very special 2017 Aston Martin V12 Vantage S, one of the last “old-school” Astons with “the old design language, the old engine, and the old interior.” And, of course, the classic seven-speed manual transmission with dog-leg shifter on the console.
Though now outdated, the 2017 Vantage S has plenty to offer, such as the six-liter, 565-horsepower V12 good for pushing the exotic to 205 mph. And while most exotics like the new Vantage opt for automatics, this Vantage stands out for sticking by the manual. DeMuro says this particular setup is unusual, starting with the fact it has seven gears instead of six. The gears are traversed via a dog-leg shifter which puts second gear above third, the two gears most likely to be used on the track. He later says “the dog-leg thing is not actually all that weird” once you’re driving, though, especially if you’re trained to shift up to the next gear.
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Other stand-out features include the voices for the GPS, which can be had in lots of languages with male and female voices for most of them (two Italian female voices, but no males, and one Arab male voice, but no females, as two examples). Most of the push buttons are glass (only the fuel door button is plastic for practicality reasons), the $1,500 “Sapphire” starter key has no ring to attach it alongside “lesser” keys, and there’s an umbrella tucked away in the back, one which costs $300 to replace should it become lost.
This V12 Vantage S may have gotten a 63 out of 100 on DeMuro’s “Doug Score” rating system, but we’d still be happy to take this $200,000 Aston out on the highway to shift the day away on a few desert roads.
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