![]() Aston Martin DBS Superleggera Is a Graceful Rocket.2023 Aston Martin DBS 770 Ultimate Revealed.Verdict: Less focussed than the DBS coupe, and perhaps all the better for it. Even more than the coupe, the DBS Volante is an event, a riot of sheer gorgeousness and noise. The DBS has always been more of a deeply fast grand tourer, a DB9S, if you like, and it does that still better in convertible form. epic though the coupe is, it never managed the out-and-out supercar thing quite as well as the Ferrari 599. There’s a lack of precision in the throttle, too.īut these flaws, this slight softness at the limit, matter less in the Volante than the coupe. None more so than that bloody giant gear lever – nicked off an Astra VXR, surely? – which is so big and so poorly positioned that it’s near impossible to flick between gears unless you’ve got freakishly short forearms and giant hands. Minor niggles, but at £170,000, minor niggles are amplified. A bit too shiny, sometimes: the information screen on the central dash is unreadable with the roof down, while the dash-mounted tweeters on the Bang and Olufsen stereo – which sounds, incidentally, very nearly as good as the engine – are so glossy in finish that they strobe streetlights straight onto your retinas. Whether our Madam Whiplash red leather interior gets your vote in the taste department, there’s no doubting it’s a magnificently appointed place to be, all soft cow hide, smart stitching and expensive-looking shiny stuff. Get the roof down, show off the posh cabin for all the world to see. but who ever ordered quietness in a DBS Volante? Thanks to a new Thinsulate layer (as worn by folk with emergency whistles and compasses), things are nice and quiet roof up. If meteorological conditions require you to raise the roof, it’s a simple job, the fabric roof raising or lowering in 14 seconds – three seconds quicker than the DB9. You’ll still be able to fit a couple of drinks cartons and a pencil there. You could argue that the baffle renders the rear seats useless – as you’ll have spotted, the Volante gets a pair of teeny chairs in the back, whereas the DBS Coupe is a strict two-seater – but this is unfair: they’re useless even without the baffle. At 191mph, your head will be sucked backwards through the headrest like lasagne through a pasta maker. ![]() At motorway speeds the buffeting is ferocious without the rear seat cover in place. Since you’re going to tool around everywhere with the roof down, make sure you fit the wind baffle. The ride is stiff but compliant on the standard damper setting – so good, in fact, that I can’t imagine when you’d ever use the ‘Sports’ setting on real roads. Though the clutch and steering are weighty, there’s a nice linear response and enough feedback to know when you’re getting close to the limit. For something so bloody big and front-engined and open-topped, the Volante is a genuinely focussed drive: hugely fast, impressively grippy and only a little bit scary. Yes, there’s a bit more flex than in the coupe, but you’d need to be pushing on at such a rate to find it that you’ll be in a big lot of danger if you get it wrong. Unless you’re planning on drifting all the way around Alderley Edge, the Volante is plenty stiff. ![]() and then chop the roof off to undo all your good work?ĭispel such worries. Top down, I reckon it’s an even better looking thing than the DBS coupe.īut isn’t 25 per cent quite a lot, especially in something as full-on as a DBS? Surely something 25 per cent less stiff than, say, Usain Bolt would be a slightly pointy jellyfish? Herein lies the worry with the DBS Volante: why go to all the effort of creating a super-stiff, ultra-focussed supercar. Look at those gorgeous ‘speed humps’ that hide the pop-up roll hoops on the rear deck. Some foolish people – perhaps the very same ones who dole out that daft windows-down advice – may tell you the DBS isn’t as beautiful as the DB9, that it’s a bit too bling, a bit too fussy. Then again, the DBS Volante is an awful lot of car. Actually, it’s an awful lot of money: £50,000 more than the DB9 Volante, £11,000 more than the DBS coupe. The Volante makes a racket so deeply, deeply awesome that you think, “£170k? That’s not so bad.”Īh. Some foolish people say you’ll get the same effect with the windows down in the DBS coupe (yes, that’s The Bond Car, let’s get it out the way now). If ever there was a sound to justify the sheer rightness of internal combustion, this is it: steely, hard-edged and, when the exhaust bypass valves flip open at 4,000rpm, gigantically loud.
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