Aston Martin Debuts the Vantage for North America

It’s impossible to go 202 miles per hour on Manhattan’s Park Avenue (and you shouldn’t try) but that’s where Aston Martin’s opulent showroom is, just down the road from Ferrari. The cars follow the money, and the new Vantage that had its North American debut in New York this month carries a price tag of US$191,000.

Aston is aiming to produce “the definitive front-engine, rear-wheel drive sports car,” powered by a four-litre AMG-sourced twin-turbo V8 engine producing 655 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque. Shifting through an eight-speed ZF automatic gearbox (there’s no manual option), it can reach 60 mph in 3.4 seconds. The Vantage can be ordered now, with deliveries this summer.

In other words, the Vantage is a traditional supercar in an age of rapid electrification. There isn’t an auto company in the world that isn’t aware of what’s ahead. And according to Alex Long, who was in New York and heads product and market strategy for Aston, the company is collaborating with California-based Lucid on an electric Aston that will appear in 2026. They’re having the naming discussions now, but few details are available. Lucid, which fields the ultra-fast Air Sapphire , is a pioneer in developing lighter and smaller components for EVs.

The two-seat Vantage has a lot of overlap with the DB12 (a 2+2, meaning it has two decent sized seats in the front and two smaller ones in the back] and it’s a venerable name in the Aston Martin universe, going back 70 years. The new model has been greatly reworked, with modifications to the chassis, engine, body design (the grille is 30% larger), and an all-new interior and bespoke in-house infotainment system with the company’s first touchscreen. Horsepower is up 30% and the torque is up 15%.

The DB12, seen in convertible form, is a Vantage relative that offers 2+2 seating.
Jim Motavalli

Technical types can thrill to such revelations as “a stiffer-yet-lighter front engine cross brace for increased torsional rigidity and lateral stiffness between the front suspension towers,” as described by Aston Martin.

The new Vantage is indeed techy for an Aston Martin, and offers active vehicle dynamics, adaptive shock absorbers from Bilstein, and an electronic rear differential. There’s a launch control system that manages torque to keep the car planted when it takes off for the horizon.

“[Owner] Lawrence Stroll has made a huge investment in Aston Martin,” Long says. “He believes that in supercar positioning, we have to go all the way.” The Vantage on display was certainly gorgeous in eye-popping Podium Green, which has some blue in it. Apparently the tried-and-true but dark British Racing Green comes off as black in photographs. The vivid green contrasts with a neon-like Lime Essence stripe around the rocker panels and tail.

There was no driving component, but racing driver Darren Turner, a three-time Le Mans winner and an Aston Martin development driver, was on hand.

“I’ve been with the Vantage development program from the beginning,” Turner says. “Our aim with the driving modes [which include Sport, Sport Plus, and Track] was precision behind the wheel.” There’s no “comfort” mode—if you want to commute or buy groceries, you use Sport which, Turner says, “is not too hard on the suspension.”

Long says the Vantage is “practical” because it has a big trunk, but it’s young couples and empty-nesters who won’t mind the absence of a back seat. As for what’s under the hood, Aston’s customers are still thrilling to the sound of a V8 engine and are not pushing for an EV. But with a European ban on internal combustion by 2035, and similar directives in American states, EVs are inevitable under the Aston banner.

Inside the Vantage, with a new infotainment system.
Jim Motavalli

Meanwhile, Aston has other models coming. The ultra-exclusive Cosworth V12-powered Valkyrie (priced at up to US$3.5 million for the track AMR Pro version) will be replaced by the even-more-potent Valhalla at the end of this year. Only 999 Valhallas will be built. The 937-horsepower Valhalla, with an AMG V-8 and two electric motors, will be Aston’s first plug-in hybrid and priced around US$800,000. The Valkyrie was a huge hit in terms of garnering publicity for the brand, and the Valhalla will similarly serve. Just 150 Valkyrie coupes and 85 Spyders are being built, and production should be done by the end of 2024.

The DBX was an instant big seller for Aston
Jim Motavalli

Aston has put considerable effort recently into Formula One and GT racing, and there’s also the Vantage GT4 competition car, which (because of strict rules) shares about 80% of the road car’s structure and mechanicals. But the bonded aluminium chassis gains a custom roll cage.

Aston Martin sold 6,620 cars in 2023. When the company introduced its first SUV, the DBX, it quickly became the company’s runaway bestseller despite a high price tag, now at US$200,086. The DBX 707 (the number is the horsepower rating) ups the ante. SUV leadership is a common result among supercar enterprises that grit their teeth and build SUVs to fulfil consumer demand.

It may be a while before Aston Martin is an all-electric brand. Right now, it’s keeping the order books filled with AMG-powered supercars. But transition is ahead.

David Beckham was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday with Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan to promote their new partnership. But all anyone wanted to talk about was his son.

After the obligatory questions about business and the World Cup, a host on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” lobbed Beckham an out-of-left-field query about how young people can preserve their mental health in the age of social media.

“Children are allowed to make mistakes,” Beckham, 50, said. “That’s how they learn. So, that’s what I try to teach my kids, but you have to sometimes let them make those mistakes as well.”

Just a day earlier, his 26-year-old son Brooklyn Beckham had posted a series of accusations about his soccer-famous father and pop-star-turned-fashion-designer mother, Victoria Beckham.

He said that his parents had controlled him for years, lied about him to the press and sought to damage his relationship with his wife, Nicola Peltz Beckham. Their goal, he said, was to affect the image of a “perfect family.”

“My family values public promotion and endorsements above all else,” he wrote on Instagram. “Brand Beckham comes first.”

That brand has been burnished over decades of professional triumphs, tabloid scandals and slick dealmaking.

Recently, both David and Victoria Beckham put their legacies on-screen in docuseries that cast them as hardworking entrepreneurs and devoted parents. Their image appeared stronger than ever. Now their firstborn child is throwing stones.

Representatives for David Beckham, Victoria Beckham and Brooklyn Beckham did not respond to requests for comment. A representative for Nicola Peltz Beckham declined to comment.

In the U.K., the Beckhams are as close as you can get to royalty without sharing Windsor DNA. David is perhaps the most famous English player in soccer history, while Victoria parlayed her Spice Girls fame into a career as a respected fashion designer.

Their partnership was forged in the cauldron of 1990s celebrity gossip, with their every move—in their careers, their bumpy personal lives and their adventurous senses of personal style—subject to tabloid scrutiny.

“They were Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce before Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce,” said Elaine Lui, founder of the website Lainey Gossip.

Over time, the couple became savvy managers of their own brand, a sprawling modern empire including a professional soccer team, fashion and beauty lines, investment deals and commercial partnerships.

In recent years they each released a Netflix docuseries—“Beckham” in 2023, “Victoria Beckham” in 2025—featuring scenes from their private family life. (Brooklyn and Nicola appeared in David’s series, but not Victoria’s.)

“The way they’ve performed their celebrity has been togetherness,” Lui said: Appearing and engaging with the world as a happily married couple, in both relative calm and amid scandal. And as their family grew, their four children became smiling ambassadors for Brand Beckham, too.

Until Monday night. In a series of Instagram Story posts, Brooklyn accused his parents of “trying endlessly to ruin” his marriage to Nicola, an actress and model, and the daughter of billionaire investor Nelson Peltz . Brooklyn declared, “I do not want to reconcile with my family.”

Where Victoria and David seemed to see press scrutiny as part of the job, Brooklyn and Nicola are operating in a manner more typical of their own generation. Brooklyn’s posts call to mind the “no contact” boundaries some children have enforced with their parents in recent years to much pop-psych chatter.

Andrew Friedman, managing director of crisis communications at Orchestra, said he’d advised many clients through family drama. “Going public,” he said, should be a “last resort.”

He’s also warned clients that using social media to air grievances opens a can of worms. “Nuance is not welcome in social-media feeding frenzies,” Friedman said. “Sensational and unusual details will overshadow the central issue.”

Brooklyn, the eldest of the Beckhams’ four children, has built a following in his parents’ image, though without the benefit (or burden) of a steady career.

He’s worked as a model, photographer, cooking-show host and most recently founded a hot-sauce brand. Brooklyn and Nicola went public with their relationship in 2020 and married in a lavish 2022 ceremony at her family estate in Palm Beach, Fla.

Rumors of a family feud flared almost immediately after the wedding, including whispers about the fact that Nicola didn’t wear a dress made by her fashion-designer mother-in-law.

Brooklyn on Monday recounted further grievances related to a mother-son dance and the seating chart. In the months and years that followed, celebrity journalists and fans closely tracked both generations of the family, looking for cracks in the relationship.

But official dispatches from Beckham World suggested that things were just fine. In a scene from the final episode of David’s Netflix series, the Beckham family, including Brooklyn and Nicola, joke around on a visit to their country home. It’s a picture of familial bliss.

“We’ve tried to give our children the most normal upbringing as possible. But you’ve got a dad that was England captain and a mom that was Posh Spice,” David says in voice-over.

“And they could be little s—s. And they’re not. And that’s why I say I’m so proud of my children, and I’m so in awe of my children, the way they’ve turned out.”

Aston Martin Debuts the Vantage for North America

In a series of social-media posts, the eldest child of David and Victoria Beckham threw stones at the image of a ‘perfect family’.