Aston Martin Vantage vs Porsche 911 GTS vs BMW M4 CS

The broader shouldered Vantage doesn’t just look intimidating then. It’s obviously fed up with the likes of us branding it the ‘baby Aston’ or ‘entry level’, and is taking absolutely no prisoners. Entrusting just the rear tyres with 656bhp, it’s got a chunk more poke than the old one, thanks to bigger turbos and Aston’s boffins writing an entirely new engine management programme instead of having to tiptoe around AMG’s coding.

Photography: John Wycherley

And wow, it looks more exotic, wearing the confidence of a car that deserves to cost £165,000. The swollen rear haunches accent the pinched waist and bless the whole widemouthed ensemble with a hint of One-77 stance. All morning, the team are cooing over it in the pits. Thinking of excuses not to brave it out on track.

I chose the new 911 to learn Navarra in, which would seem odd to anyone who grew up with these quirky arse-engined coupes being pig headed, bloody minded widowmakers. We’ve lined it up against the best sports coupes from Aston and BMW’s M division and it’s the anti-physics Porsche that’s the least vindictive.

How did that happen? Yes, there are modern tyres and traction control but it’s the feel of the latest 911 that’s extraordinarily benign. You can flick it into a corner with complete disregard for its layout and it’ll obey like a mid-engined car. You can poke it with a completely illogical mid-corner lift and a gulp ’n’ pray confidence brake, if you like. It won’t bite.

Everyone who samples it arrives back grinning about how it blends adjustability with huge traction. Rowan comments it’s amazingly playful for a four-wheel drive. “Erm, mate,” I gesture to the badge. “It’s not a ‘4’. Rear drive only.” He splutters like the marshal who got brain lasered by The Stig and staggers away shaking his head.

Previously, you’ll have read the 911 Turbo edge a narrow victory over the new Vantage on the road – less exuberant, but more liveable. On Speed Week, we’re less interested in the day to day, and more bothered by what’s exciting. So, the 911 doesn’t lose points for having no back seats here – they’re bizarrely now a cost option, so Porsche can homologate the car 10kg lighter.

Why so keen to shave the weight? Because in this 992 GTS, there’s 50kg of hybrid gubbins to tug along (a shoebox size battery under the windscreen juices a lag busting motor on the turbo, and there’s a torque boosting motor in the gearbox). Not that you can feel anything’s blunted, or see anything’s afoot. No green badging or fluoro brake calipers. No mooching down the pitlane in e-mode. Just a lightning bolt power delivery that makes what’s nominally the ‘mid-range’ 911 supercar fast. It’s another hugely complete, sorted, polished Porsche 911. Which you’d expect, after 63 years of evolution.

Right, let’s put the BMW out of its misery. The M division is amid a curiously patchy, um, patch at the moment. At last year’s Speed Week we enjoyed the M2 and M3 Touring, though neither sparkled brightly enough to enter the final reckoning. A year previous we panned the lardy M4 CSL – the most undeserving attempt to wear a badge since I applied to be school prefect.

This CS is supposed to distil learnings of the CSL into a daily liveable mix. Plenty of good news too: not a limited edition, £8k less expensive, same overboosted 543bhp engine. Happy with your investment, CSL owners?

Underneath, the CS boasts stiffer engine mounts, better cooling for the motor and the four-wheel drive to outlast regular M4s on track, harder suspension plus (minus?) a 20kg weight saving thanks to various carbon panels and a raucous titanium exhaust. Here, today, it should be wunderbar. There should be brawls breaking out for the keys.

Instead, there’s muttering. I’m hearing complaints of a huge dead spot in the steering just off centre, and that it’s so heavy the front tyres are disintegrating.

With trepidation, I get to know the M4. I drove one earlier in the year as a warm up to test the new M5 – clever way to make the M4 feel as light as a Caterham. So far, so M4. The stupid carbon thigh gutter seats remain, and the straight six still makes a guttural over-enhanced noise as it gargles out of the pits while I scroll through the endless menus finding a promising settings combo. Traction control in the superb Dynamic mode halfway off setting, AWD system sending most of the power to the back, with throttle response and shift speeds wound up to the max.

For two laps, the CS is hopeless. Maybe it’s borked. It won’t brake straight and true, it won’t turn in. Eventually it stubbornly understeers away from the apex. Frustrating. Throw power at the problem and it pendulums into the sort of messy skid that I gather up while accidentally whacking the wiper stalk and beeping the horn. What’s going on? Turns out the already suffering tyres are Pirelli’s Trofeo R chewing gum spec, which need to be brought gently up to temperature.

Once they’re sticky, the M4’s a different car. Trust that it’ll bite despite how dead the thickset steering wheel feels in your hands. Know it’ll find perfect traction when you gas it. The CS doesn’t want to carry masses of turn-in speed, but once it’s settled it’ll find a pleasing balance. Even better when you dial down the idiotic upshift ‘thunk’ they’ve coded into the rapid but un-involving auto box.

The GTS puts its performance on such a low shelf there’s little left for you to do

Jethro is one of the few to unearth the fun to be had here, but surmises this supposedly hardcore, focused M4 is weirdly happier in its everyman all-wheel drive mode. The CS struggles to settle. It fails to satisfy those looking for the ultimate everyday M coupe or anyone who hops in looking for a laugh. Maybe less silly tyres would’ve helped? We liked the M3 CS on the road, but right now against stellar opposition, its M4 cousin doesn’t justify being a £120,000 standalone model. Buy an M2. Or an M3 Touring. There are CS versions of both arriving next year.

Things are (as per) looking peachy for the 911, except for a couple of things. Firstly, you cannot under any circumstances drive this car with the sports exhaust switched on. The hoarse roar it generates is the fakest noise ever heard in a Porsche, Taycan included. It’s just volume and resonance, no tune, no timbre, no tone changing, nostalgia tickling flat-six chunter. At least with it switched off you can detect a hint of the demonic ‘wheeeeee’ as the e-turbo whizzes away. GTS? Got Tinnitus, Scheiße.

There’s also something missing here beyond tunelessness. The GTS puts its performance on such a low shelf there’s little left for you to do. GTS has always been Porsche speak for ‘sweet spot’ but this one was more like a 911 Turbo-lite, a hugely competent all-rounder lacking character amid its ‘quantifiable on a graph’ superiority. Having an S/T nearby leaves you wondering, if you can make a 911 that good, why aren’t they all that good?

It’s also wallet witheringly expensive. This grey and black car had somehow arrived sporting a £180,000 as tested price. Yes, ceramic brakes and anti-roll suspension are pricey and you probably don’t need either, but for that sort of change, wouldn’t you fancy a bit more sense of occasion?

This is where the Vantage (£165k before options) overdelivers to an almost ridiculous degree. The chasm of improvement versus the old model is vast, not just in the tactile but imperfect interior (the screens can only be read under a microscope, the seat controls are in the wrong place and the target audience will perform DIY vasectomies on the naked carbon seat bolster). And not just in the huge power increase, because thanks to EVs we’re not really impressed by power like we once were. If you want ‘a fast car’, buy a Tesla. Giving a short wheelbase more power than an Enzo is very deliberate overkill. It sends a message to customers and rivals. No more Mr Nice Aston.

“Wild.” “Spicy.” “Hairy.” “A handful, innit?” “Ow, my nads.” And other more unrepeatable summings up. There’s just a smattering of verdicts heard from the guys as they clambered out from behind the swan door puffing their cheeks. Doesn’t take long in the hot seat to find out why. This is a car designed to make you laugh, gasp and swear out loud.

Firstly, there’s the lorry load of torque. This V8’s never been short of low down grunt but the speed it accrues from lazy revs in fourth is hilarious. The Aston’s quickened gearbox is the weakest of the three cars here, particularly when it outright refuses to acknowledge downshifts under heavy braking, but you quickly learn to get round that by simply not changing gear.

The Aston bludgeons the inert M4 and clinical 911 with its gutsy personality

There doesn’t appear to be any need, unless you’re bored of your passenger’s ears bleeding all over the upholstery. For a turbo engine the authenticity and malevolence that’s been uncorked is stupendous. It’s every bit as overengined as those gloriously silly twin supercharged brick s***house Vantages from the 1990s. How salty must AMG be that right as it’s busy ruining the C63’s V8 legacy, Aston has delivered its most spectacular outing to date?

So the engine is the star. The rest mostly does it justice. Even on track the Vantage is too stiff in its track setting – we all get along with it best once the dampers are knocked back to the Comfort setting, which rings true with what Ollie found on the road. On track, its girth isn’t an issue, and the steering is meaty but relaxed and measured, so you can faithfully choose a line then devote all of your attention to a game of chicken with your right foot.

Speaking of which, there’s a traction control system to encourage hijinks – ‘1’ is mostly on, ‘8’ is totally off. I admit I span it in ‘4’ only to prove this is not some idiotproof drift mode. This car demands respect. Occasionally, you’re not even driving it. You’re just hanging on.

The Aston bludgeons the inert M4 and clinical 911 with its gutsy personality. Too much car to handle? For me, sure. But I’m in good company.