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2026 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster First Look: V8 Fury With the Wind in Your Hair

Aston Martin's lovely new 656-horsepower Vantage gains a drop-top variant

2025 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster driving
  • The new Aston Martin Vantage gains a Roadster variant this spring.
  • The Roadster retains the Vantage's 656-horsepower V8 engine, as well as its claimed 3.5-second 0-60 mph time.
  • Dropping the top takes just 6.8 seconds.

The new Aston Martin Vantage coupe may be the most competent and functional it has ever been. It’s got a great powerplant with a solidly engineered chassis, decent technology and all the style a buyer could want. The drop-top variant hasn’t always been a direct translation of the coupe’s qualities, but the 2026 Vantage Roadster that Aston Martin announced on Tuesday just might be.

As you’d expect, the Vantage Roadster’s bona fides are the same: a 656-horsepower twin-turbocharged V8 sourced from AMG and tweaked by the folks at Aston, paired with an eight-speed automatic gearbox and rear-wheel drive. The chassis also remains largely unchanged, with a double-wishbone suspension in the front and a multilink axle in the rear, working alongside Bilstein DTX adaptive dampers and an electronic limited-slip rear end, for improved side-to-side power delivery and grip.

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2025 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster interior

Where things get interesting is in the relative lack of sacrifice made in the name of roofless motoring. Aston Martin claims that the folding top and its mechanicals only add 132 pounds to the vehicle’s weight, and the design of the roof means there is no change to the Vantage’s 202-mph top speed or 3.5-second 0-60 mph time. Aston also wisely adjusted the car’s body structure to accommodate the rearward shift in weight from the roof cassette, meaning handling shouldn’t suffer much, if at all.

The roof is claimed to be the quickest-operating fully automatic power top on the market, with a cycling time of 6.8 seconds from business mode to party time, and it will work at speeds up to 31 mph. Its final trick is that the roof can be activated remotely as long as the driver is within 6.5 feet of the car.

2025 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster rear 3/4

The 2026 Vantage Roadster also marks the introduction of three — well, two and a half — new paint colors: Iridescent Sapphire, Satin Iridescent Sapphire and Bronze Flare. The soft roof can be had in a handful of colors as well, including black, red, blue, and a black-and-silver combo. As you’d expect, though, customization in this segment is really only limited to how much money you’re willing to throw at the folks in Gaydon, so go nuts.

The 2026 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster is set to reach customers this spring.

2025 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster driving