Aston Martin V12 Vantage RS concept (2008) CAR review

Aston Martin's V12 Vantage RS. Big engine, little car. It’s a concept many of the great performance cars have employed. Take a powerful engine from your biggest car and stuff it into your smallest car to create a proper factory hot rod. In this case Aston has wedged the 600bhp V12 from no less than the DBRS9 racer under the bonnet of the poor little Vantage coupe, making for a power to weight ratio of 392bhp per tonne. And now CAR has taken the V12-powered Vantage RS, the company’s craziest car since the bruiser Vantage of the late 1990’s, on a few full throttle laps of France’s Paul Ricard circuit.

So it’s not short of grunt?

Aston reckons on a sub 4.0sec 0-60mph time and around 8.5sec to 100mph which would make it fractionally quicker than a DBS. But it feels far more savage from the driving seat and a fully race prepared DBRS9 sharing the track with us was no quicker on the straights. The speedo isn’t plugged in, 5000rpm in sixth equates to over 170mph, and Aston hopes that given a longer straight the RS would crack 200mph. And with the DBS’s brilliant carbon stoppers at each corner but 165kg less to deal with the RS does slowing as well as it does going.

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