Aston Martin’s Wild New Vantage Has Way Too Many Exhaust Tips

A hardcore new take on the Aston Martin Vantage has been spied on and around the Nürburgring in Germany, and it’s the wildest version of the automaker’s smallest offering so far, with as many exhaust pipes as it has cylinders: eight. The only other car in recent times to have so many outlets is the Bugatti Tourbillon with the Équipe Pur Sang option, and that’s a multi-million dollar hypercar with a V16 engine. So what is Aston Martin up to? Well, our spies say this may be a new Vantage RS or Vantage AMR, potentially with upgrades developed in racing. Let’s take a closer look.

Hardcore Aston Martin Vantage Prototype Has a Long Way to Go

This is our first sighting of this hardcore Vantage, and the matte black development mule looks far from finished. The outer exhaust tips are seemingly unchanged from those on the regular Vantage, and those in the center of the diffuser don’t have the same finishers. Higher up, the large wing on the rear decklid is too crude for a production car. While we see carbon fiber here, the bolts on this wing are simply ugly. In addition, the shape of the wing is very similar to that of the previous-generation Vantage GT4, being far less sculptural than Gaydon’s current race car. All of these factors indicate that this Vantage is at the early stages of on-road development, and we expect prettier looks for its final form.

As for the rest of the vehicle, the only other clue to suggest this is not a standard Vantage is the front splitter, which is deeper and slightly more aggressive. As our first sighting, we don’t yet have any rumors to share, but we suspect that Aston Martin won’t be going quite this wild for the final production model. Sure, a new splitter and rear wing will feature, but we highly doubt the automaker will offer a car with eight tips. Instead, we suspect that Aston Martin is either working on a new central exhaust system for the hardcore Vantage, making the outer tips redundant, or it’s added the center tips just to generate a buzz. The former option seems more viable.

New Aston Martin Vantage V12? It’s Not Impossible

Last year, CarBuzz spoke with Aston Martin about its future Vantage plans, and while the British automaker was not willing to share in-depth details, it did say that not only would more hardcore variants be coming, but also that the twin-turbocharged V12 used in the Vanquish could theoretically fit in the Vantage’s engine bay. Our spies would have said something if they heard the note of anything but a V8, so this prototype is doubtless the former, a more extreme Vantage with a tweaked engine, and a V12 variant would likely only follow nearer the end of this Vantage’s life cycle. We’ll report back once we know more.