North of Detroit’s east side sits Macomb County. It trades neighboring Oakland County’s Minnesota-like spattering of eclectically populated lakes for one big one: Lake St. Clair. It’s very suburban and home to several automobile assembly plants and suppliers. It’s also home to Kid Rock—a man whom the almost imperturbably polite Ken Jennings once called “a little Florida-coded.”
Its close proximity to Detroit makes Macomb County part of my improvised grand loop around the city, and it’s home to some of the few roads in the immediate metro area that actually turn left and right, though I wouldn’t venture so far as to call many of them “fun.” Sometimes they turn from asphalt to gravel almost on a whim, just to keep things spicy.
It’s also the third-most populous county in Michigan, with just shy of 900,000 residents. And every time I’m behind the wheel of a fine British machine, I seem to have a novel encounter with one or more of them. This time, it was at a gas station in Sterling Heights. The Stellantis employees in the audience just winced.
I was out in the 2026 Aston Martin Vantage S. It was a gorgeous Saturday projected to be free of rain long enough for us to complete some variation of my circuitous test route. The weather and traffic cooperated to deliver flawless cruise conditions, and all was going swimmingly when I decided to make an unscheduled pit stop.
My wife had asked for a break to hit the restroom and refill her water; I was content to hop out and stretch a bit. I picked a clean-looking gas station off a major road and tucked into the first available parking spot—at the end, where I figured I had the lowest odds of an encounter. I was still patting myself on the back for my strategic thinking when the sound of rear glass desperately clinging to a liftgate under a barrage of cranked bass broke through my self-congratulatory haze. It could have been coming from any direction; it could have been departing on an equally infinite number of vectors.
But of course it wasn’t.
I was picturing a big, American SUV. I wasn’t disappointed. I was surprised, however, to see a nearly-new Escalade, not the ten-year-old claptrap of a Durango that had coalesced in my mind’s eye. It was clean, and piloted by somebody who was clearly no stranger to handling large equipment. It glided into the spot on my passenger side; the window rolling down in perfect time with its arrival. A pretty, smiling face greeted me.
“Hey, there! Are you a father?” The voice was young, but the tone was polished.
I’m 5 feet, 7 inches, and not as far below 200 pounds as I’d like to be. I was wearing a green Hanes T-shirt over Levis and the first pair of Skechers I spotted on the landing that morning. There I was, casually leaning over the open cockpit of a $250,000 Aston-freakin’-Martin. Sure, I’m a car journalist, which means I’m obligated to be at least a little bit socially dysfunctional, but I’ve long since learned the difference between a pass and a proposition.
And remember, as all of this was running through my brain, my wife was 20 feet away, separated from my situation by nothing but floor-to-ceiling windows and the equally transparent facade of social etiquette. For all I knew, she was standing within reach of a fresh box of BBQ skewers. To this day, I’m still not sure where the next six words out of my mouth came from, exactly, but I will remain eternally thankful that I managed to string them all together without hesitation.
“No, but I am a husband.” I didn’t have time to pat myself on the back for that one either, because she was already executing her pivot.
“Do you guys go to strip clubs!? I was going to offer you some Father’s Day coupons!”
Right. That inquiry as to my paternal status seems way less unhinged with that bit of context, doesn’t it?
“Not really our scene,” I said, trying to pretend I wasn’t putting extra emphasis on “our.”
“I love your car!”
Maybe it was because I caught her off the clock, or maybe it was dawning on her that I might not actually have any cash to shake loose, but she had clearly abandoned her script in favor of a more extemporaneous approach. That’s perhaps lending a bit too much credit to somebody saying, “I love [that last thing you said],” over and over again.
When I stopped feeding her new nouns for her mad-libs sheet, she pivoted to her life story. Somewhere between hearing about her (five?) kids and how she’d recently totaled her much-beloved BMW by crashing it into the very Cadillac I saw before me (in an attempt to stop its driver—her significant other—from “going to” his other girl), my grip on reality started to fade.
“Oh, I love your wife!”
Sure enough, my significant other was rounding the nose of the Cadillac, smiling coolly at my new friend. Sensing that her slowly closing window was about to slam all the way shut, our entrepreneurial acquaintance flashed her best smile and hopped out to complete whatever errand had brought her there in the first place.
“Have fun in that thing!”
I was ready to settle for surviving the next three minutes. She disappeared inside before I was done maneuvering out of the now-tight corner spot.
“She was cute,” my wife said neutrally.
“She said she makes two grand a day stripping,” I replied. That had come out somewhere in between the baby drama and the daddy-ramming drama. At least I think he was the dad… either way, I’m pretty sure I heard my wife’s eyebrows go up at “two grand.”
“You know, if I didn’t hate men so much…”
I’m partially to blame for these close encounters of the slurred kind. After all, I’m the one who insists on pulling into any old Detroit-area gas station to grab a bottle of water. Another Aston driver might call their butler, but I left mine in my other reality—you know, the one where the Vantage doesn’t have a sticker price high enough to make my house sweat nervously.
Usually, this is the part where I’d simply acknowledge that I don’t get it. I’d explain that this is a car meant to be used more symbolically than for any of its mechanical advantages, and we mortals are meant to simply appreciate the brief moments when we’re exposed to its beauty.
And it is a beautiful little thing. As wealth signposts go, I quite like it. But I quite like it as a car too.
Originally, this story was going to be about how the Vantage embodies some of the language I’ve heard the company’s engineers and designers use to describe the likes of the Valkyrie and Valhalla. They use the vocabulary of cinematography—all in an attempt to keep the car’s occupants grounded in the moment. It’s meant to be an experience. We certainly had one of those, but not the kind Aston had in mind.
When the Vantage departed, an SL680 Maybach replaced it. Yeah, this job is awesome sometimes. But this swap wasn’t just advantageous to my ego. It was also beneficial for comparison’s sake. Both are drop-tops. Both are even powered by the same AMG V8. Despite these commonalities, their characters couldn’t be more different. The Vantage may make some concessions to style and comfort, but it’s a sports car through and through. The SL’s nose may feel light thanks to the super-boosted steering, but it makes it more twitchy than responsive. The Aston, on the other hand, dutifully and crisply responds to inputs.
I ended up taking the Maybach on a 450-mile road trip. The squirrelly nose aside, it was a decent way to eat up the interstate, but I found myself longing for the Aston’s reflexes, especially on the tighter roads of rural southwest Michigan, where the British roadster would have felt right at home.
I wish it could make its home here.
Aston Martin provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this review.
2026 Aston Martin Vantage S Specs
| Base Price (S as tested) | $211,000 ($249,500) |
| Powertrain | 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 | 8-speed automatic transmission | rear-wheel drive |
| Horsepower | 670 @ 6,000 rpm |
| Torque | 590 lb-ft @ 3,000-6,000 rpm |
| Seating Capacity | 2 |
| Dry Weight | 3,881 pounds |
| Cargo Volume | 8.3 cubic feet |
| 0-60 mph | 3.3 seconds |
| Top Speed | 202 mph |
| EPA Fuel Economy | 15 mpg city | 22 mpg highway | 18 mpg combined |
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