This is the new Aston Martin Vanquish Volante, and it’s a charmer

The new 824bhp Vanquish is a special thing. It’s not only Aston Martin’s most powerful production car to date, but it also bested the Ferrari 12Cilindri to win our Super GT of the year award for 2024. And it gets better: welcome to the Volante version, which retains the 12-pot but adds a million miles of sky to an already pretty picture.

There’s a bonded aluminium structure in place to retain as much of the coupe’s torsional rigidity as possible, and the fabric roof is operational at up to 31mph - down in 16 seconds or up again in 14. The transformation has added 95kg to the coupe’s weight (now 1,869kg) though, dropping its 0-62 time down by two-tenths to 3.4s. Still ruthlessly fast, mind, and still capable of hitting that 214mph top speed to send 98 per cent of the world’s quiffs into overdrive.

But don’t stress, pedestrians will hardly notice. Not with styling like this cloaked around you. From the massive, vaned grille carried over from the V12 Vantage, to the totally refreshed rear-end with a spiked taillight cluster and floating ‘shield’ piece, the Volante is overflowing with drama. It’s not short on bulges and air pockets either.

The rectangle-heavy 21in forged alloys can be swaddled in a choice of two Pirelli tyres: P Zero PZ4s for the summer, or P Zero Winter 2s for… the other 51 weeks of the British calendar. Aston’s done some fiddling just behind here too, retuning the suspension to account for the extra mass. Combined with the Bilstein adaptive dampers, we reckon there should still be a generous amount of flexibility to the Volante’s ride and handling. In a good way, of course.

Creeping inside, much of the cabin remains the same as the coupe, barring the cross brace at the rear for storage and a button along the centre console for the roof. It means the pair of 10.25in displays stay put, as does the 15-speaker Bowers & Wilkins audio system. It’s a posh place to be, with a neat (and very much polished) centre console led by an illuminated stop/start button, chassis controls and exhaust settings. Sports seats will be fitted as standard, with carbon fibre performance-y ones thrown in as an optional extra.

If you’re sold, you’d better act fast because Aston says the Volante’s build slots will contribute to the overall Vanquish production count of 1,000 units per year - and that includes the various special editions too.

Expect the first few examples to land this winter. Probably with those summer tyres on.