Technology and the new Aston Martin Vantage

I do worry that modern sports cars, from almost every manufacturer on the planet, have prioritised the stuff that can be measured or plotted on a spreadsheet over the stuff that really matters to us on the road. Raw performance, sheer grip, outright body control, agility and so on seem to have become the main objectives. Very often, when you add more of those things to a car, you make it less engaging to drive on the road.

The new Vantage sounds astonishingly clever. Its Active Vehicle Dynamics system ‘takes information from multiple car and driver sensors such as the 6-axis accelerometer, powertrain and E-Diff sensors to build a detailed picture of exactly what the car is doing’. By comparing that information ‘against model-based Integrated Vehicle Dynamics Estimation parameters, the ESP can then actively control the three key pillars of the vehicle dynamics system (ride, handling and steering) to optimise handling’.

Blimey. Aston insists the new Vantage is ‘a car that welcomes real drivers in and invites them to explore the limits’, which is promising. But why is all of this technology necessary at all? I suppose it’s because the stuff I favour in sports cars doesn’t make them sell, while vast power does. And if you want that when cars are naturally heavy because of crash legislation and all the convenience kit they must carry, you need a supercomputer working in the background just to keep them upright.