Aston Martin is a brand on the move. It’s pushing more towards the dynamic, departing from its more comfort-focused approach to producing cars which are even more entertaining and involving for the driver. We’ve already seen that process started with cars like the DBX707 – which represented a radical departure from the standard DBX – while the DB12 was introduced with more edge than the DB11 it replaced.

Now, it’s the turn of the Vantage. The baby sports car in Aston Martin’s range, this 911-rivalling two-seater has been redesigned to make it ‘the most driver focused and fastest Vantage’ that we’ve seen so far, according to the brand. Is that the reality, though? We’ve been out to Seville to find out.

While it might’ve been easy for Aston Martin to simply have turned up the dial on the Vantage’s V8 engine and leave it at that, things have been taken a lot further. The transmission has been completely recalibrated over the previous generation to offer sharper, more eager shifts while a clever new adjustable traction control system allows you to tweak the level of assistance you’re after through a variety of different levels.

Read the full test-drive at timesmotors.com