Aston Martin is readying a range of personalisation options for the V8 Vantage range for 2010. Last night our spies in the Midlands snapped these shots of a metallic blue Aston Vantage near the Gaydon HQ, showing off some of the model year changes due for the Vantage.
Lo and behold, 24 hours later we have confirmation that this is the new 2010 Aston Martin V8 Vantage range – and here is the first official photo of it. It’s a ‘soft launch’ that hasn’t been announced, explaining our intrigue in the blue Vantage last night.
So what’s new on the 2010 Aston Martin V8 Vantage?
You can order the new 2010 model now, with first deliveries landing in early 2010. Prices start at £83,191 for the coupé, £91,021 for the Roadster.
The Vantage range is pepped up by:
• New optional 10-spoke forged 19-inch alloy wheels with diamond turned and silver finish
• New optional lightweight seats with kevlar and carbonfibre construction – to save 17kg
• Clear rear lamps
• N400 sill design
• Magnum silver bonnet and side strake meshes
• Optional 1000W B&O hi-fi system
The blue car we scooped is registered as a V8 with the regular 4.7-litre lump, not the 6.0-litre bent 12 in the V12 Vantage. Yet its slightly confused dress sense, mixing styling cues from V8 and V12, was what caught our photographer’s attention in the first place. It is, apparently, an engineering hack and not totally representative of the finished car revealed in the first official picture.
As part of the 2010 model year changes, the CO2 output of the manual V8 will tumble from 328g/km to 315g/km, while the Sportshift box brings that down to 300g/km. A useful drop in an increasingly carbon-obsessed world.
How have they reduced the Vantage’s CO2?
It’s all through transmission tweaks apparently, with remapped software and tweaked ratios.