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Aston Martin DBS
Bond is back with buyers as Aston Martin succeeds in defining cool
I have spent two days bonding with a car. By the end of the second day the relationship had stirred from a cautious, nodding acquaintance to being dangerously close to something like passion – via interest, amusement and healthy respect. The car is Aston Martin’s new DBS.
Aston Martin likes to consider itself very cool, a fact supported by its four decades’ association with James Bond and underlined by the DBS making the cover illustration of a new book called CoolBrands, published by Superbrands. Writing in it, James Aitchison, the managing editor of the World Advertising Research Centre, says that some people may struggle “like frustrated alchemists trying to understand and define what cool is”. Superbrands provides interesting insight into this.
So does the DBS. It may be based on the company’s successful DB9, a pretty chilled out piece of kit, but it is more physically rounded – wider and lower – and it has a “soul” with a “thunder and lightning” persona, as Dr Ulrich Bez, chief executive of Aston Martin, puts it.
It is a car that has a curious effect on the environment. At the beginning of my bonding experience, which took place mainly in bucolic southwest France, I was concerned about how a lightning supercar powered by a 6.0litre, V12 engine producing 510bhp and able to reach 191mph would be received, particularly because the thunder from its twin exhausts (a modest touch, this; I had expected at least four, possibly even eight tailpipes) could probably be heard in Paris.
In fact, it was received with great enthusiasm. From a refuse collector swinging from the back of a truck came a beaming smile and a thumbs-up; from children emerging into the free world at the end of their school day came yells and waves and from an elderly man returning to his Euro hatchback, a look of quiet yearning.
The DBS is that sort of car. It does not have to prove what it can do and does not have to be coarsely overt about its capabilities, although there are one or two jarring elements, including a stainless steel and sapphire ignition key-cum-starter button called an “Emotion Control Unit”. A design anomaly is a chunky gear lever placed too far back. Using it was an elbow-bashing experience involving collisions with a stowage box positioned in a daft place; so consider the auto when it is available. But the positive elements of the car eclipse any quibbles.
The two-seat DBS is 80kg lighter than the 2+2 DB9 with use of lightweight but stiff carbon fibre for front wings, bonnet and boot lid plus some interior trim. Carbon-fibre seats are a no-cost option and are huggingly good. Brakes are carbon ceramic.
A new “intelligent” adaptive damping system provides a fine ride and handling balance, with automatic damper adjustment across five settings. Accelerate hard out of a corner and it allows the car to squirm slightly as it hunkers down and hurls itself forward. It is not a problem, but a firmer “Track” setting is selectable. I found the regular, more compliant setting, which was fine for most situations.
The engine produces 60bhp more than the DB9 and provides the DBS with an inexorable urge; 0-62mph time is 4.3sec. But it is driving the DBS for long distances on challenging roads when the power, flexibility and sound of six litres at work combine to create an unremitting, addictive delight, the V12 providing fine entertainment even when just burbling slowly through a village. Steering is ideally weighted and those huge ceramic brakes are very, very comforting.
The DBS, about 30 per cent physically different from a DB9, is also some 30 per cent more expensive but about £25,000 cheaper than the now discontinued Vanquish. Worth it? Provided that quality and reliability are all that they seem, yes.
And what of that human-machine bonding process? After two days we could have been branded a supercool item, bringing an end to the tortured frustrations of ancient alchemists hunting the elusive formula for cool: mix £160,000 with a vast amount of enthusiasm and it will transform into a DBS. Perhaps.
Warm reaction to a frosty appearance
When Dr Ulrich Bez, the Aston Martin chief executive, arrived for work at his office in Gaydon, Warwickshire, one morning in November last year a silver V8 Roadster caught his eye. It was glistening under a coating of frost in the early morning sunshine and creating a startling colour of opalescent frosty-blue.
Bez rushed into the office, called his design team into the car park and told them: “That’s the colour I want to offer our customers.” After months of research the team came up with Morning Frost and the colour has been trialled on a V8 roadster, a DB9 coupé and a Vanquish. Marek Reichman, the design director, said: “It took more than six months for us to develop the paint and replicate the colour we were looking for, but we’re delighted with the end result, which is proving very popular.”
In fact, Aston Martin has received a number of orders, many from international customers around the world, requesting the special colour.
Specification
Car Aston Martin DBS
Engine 510bhp 6.0litre V12, torque 570Nm at 5,750rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual
Performance 0-62mph 4.3sec, top speed 191mph
Fuel consumption (comb) 17.3mpg
CO2 emissions 388g/km
Price £160,000
On sale Now
Words by David Barzilay
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