2025 Aston Martin Vantage vs. the Competition

Aston Martin first introduced the name Vantage in 1950, for a more powerful variant of the more mainstream DB2. Today, Aston Martin has done away with the idea of mainstream, and the Vantage is built from the ground up to be exotic. And while that exoticism makes the Vantage a unique vehicle, there are nonetheless other sports cars with similar prices that are built for similar purposes. Chief among these are the Porsche 911 Turbo and the Mercedes-AMG GT. Both are exciting cars, but do they really measure up to the Vantage?

The 911 exists in two forms, the 911 and the 911 Turbo. The Turbo turns up the performance significantly, enough that it could be considered a competitor to the Vantage. That said, it starts off with some immediately obvious disadvantages. The 911 Turbo comes with a 3.7-liter twin-turbo flat-six engine that produces 572 horsepower. That’s a lot compared to the standard 911, but it falls well short of the 665 horsepower produced by the 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 in the Vantage. In fact, moving up to the Turbo S still leaves you short with 640 horsepower. And while the 911 Turbo handles as well as you can reasonably expect from a rear-engine car, the perfect 50/50 weight distribution in the Vantage is much more conducive to incredible handling.

When compared to mainstream cars, the 911 does a good job of offering a wide range of customization options, but it rates significantly lower when compared to the Vantage. The 911 is offered in 10 different paint colors, with a choice of four wheel designs. That compared to 74 shades of paint for the Vantage, as well as nine wheel designs. There are even 11 colors available for the brake calipers. The interior is much the same story, with the Vantage offering far more colors and materials, as well as more options for how these colors are used. This brings us back to the non-Turbo 911. The much lower price point of the standard 911 means that they’re not exactly rare, and even if the Turbo is a lot quicker, the untrained eye can’t tell the difference. The Vantage doesn’t just stand out compared to other cars, the lengthy list of customization options means that they’re distinct even from one another. In all, the 911 is downright ordinary by comparison.

While the GT Coupe isn’t as immediately recognizable as the 911, it’s really a better car to compare to the Vantage. That’s because both cars actually use the same 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8, sort of. They start off the same, but Aston Martin bumps up compression and upgrades the turbos, camshafts, and cooling system before installing it in the Vantage. That’s why the Vantage makes 665 horsepower to the 577 horsepower in the GT 63 Coupe. And we’re going to specify here that we’re talking about the GT 63, since there is a bargain bin four-cylinder version of the GT Coupe as well. The difference in horsepower is all the more stark because the Vantage is almost exactly 600 pounds lighter than the GT 63 Coupe, and you will absolutely feel that behind the wheel.

The GT Coupe suffers from a number of the same problems as the 911. While it’s nowhere near as popular as the Porsche, the existence of the four-cylinder version, as well as the lower-powered 469-horsepower GT 55 Coupe, means that the GT Coupe is still essentially a mainstream sports car. It offers a couple more paint colors and wheel designs than the Porsche, but that doesn’t get it anywhere near what Aston Martin offers. You can get it with black brake calipers too, but in general, the customization options are far less numerous than even Porsche’s. The GT Coupe is not an ugly car, but nobody is going to call the design exotic, or even particularly remarkable.