The Aston Martin Vantage nameplate has been around longer than you think. Currently affixed to a two-seater coupe and convertible model, the Vantage moniker has been attached to more than 36,000 cars over the past seven decades and Aston Martin is now celebrating that heritage with a gathering of its most important cars. In fact, over one-third of all sports cars ever produced by Aston Martin wear the Vantage name.

"Today's Vantage and Vantage AMR sports cars represent the latest interpretation of what this single, yet incredibly evocative, word means to drivers around the world, says Aston Martin Lagonda President and Group CEO, Dr. Andy Palmer. "As we celebrate 70 years of Vantage in 2020, it allows us to delight in our superb sports car heritage. Vantage has always stood for engineering ambition, thrilling performance, and exceptional beauty, and I'm pleased that today's models more than live up to the standards set by their iconic forebears."

The nameplate debuted in 1950 on the Aston Martin DB2 with Vantage specification featuring a 2.6-liter Lagonda engine with just 126 horsepower. Just 250 of these cars were built in total. Aston Martin continued to build Vantage models into the 1960s including the DB4 Vantage, DB5 Vantage, DB6 Vantage, DBS Vantage, and AM Vantage.

Things changed drastically with the reveal of the 1977 V8 Vantage and V8 Vantage Zagato, a car that could beat a Ferrari Daytona to 60 mph and hit 170 mph, earning it the title of "Britain's first supercar." The biggest improvement to performance came from a new V8 producing between 300 and 380 hp.

In the 1990s, Aston went mad with a twin-supercharged version of the Vantage producing 550 hp and 550lb-ft of torque. This figure was later upped to 600 hp in the V600, a car that could hit 60 mph in just 4.6 seconds and was rumored to have hit 200 mph in testing. The 1999 DB7 V12 Vantage debuted just before the turn of the century before the last one rolled off the assembly line in 2003.

In 2005, the Vantage became what we know it as today with the reveal of the VH architecture V8 Vantage. To this day, the V8 Vantage remains the brand's most successful car, though we believe the new DBX SUV will trump it. This Vantage went on to spawn V12 variants and even a Zagato version before being replaced with the current Vantage in 2017. For the 2021 model year, Aston has added a new convertible version and the option for a seven-speed dog-leg manual transmission.