Finally we barrel out of the Labyrinth's final bend and down the straight that follows, the V12 running all the way out to its redline. Then near silence: He's demonstrating the carbon-ceramic brakes, and if you listen carefully you can just hear me choking as I hang hard from my seatbelt.
Dr. Ulrich Bez took the company from producing 800 cars when he joined in 2000 to 7,000 now and over 9,000 when the Rapide arrives in 2009. He also led Aston Martin to independence from Ford earlier this year and the car we're riding in, the DBS, is the first to be launched since.
He's an engaging character, Bez. The recording of our fairly committed tour of the Warwickshire countryside also features him peppering his technical explanations with sound effects, patting my hand as he checks to see if I'm OK after the brake test and essentially refusing to go anywhere until I've killed a bee that's buzzing around in the seatless rear of the Aston Martin DBS. Odd. Happy to race around the world's most dangerous circuit in the rain at the dead of night, but terrified of insects.
The Aston Martin DBS won't cause him any sleepless nights. Once a new car selling 500 each year would have made or broken Aston. No longer; the DBS will be the smallest seller in a six-model range, and half the first year's production has been sold in the U.K. alone. Being the wheels of the most popular Bond in years, particularly when — pop-out PPK excepted — Bond's newfound realism means there's little difference between this and the car Daniel Craig drove, hardly limits your sales prospects.
Success was never in doubt. Other than being one of the first to ride in the DBS, what we wanted to discover was how we should see it. According to Aston it "bridges the gap" between the DB9 and the racing DBR9. On paper it looks like Aston's take on the 911 GT3 or 430 Scuderia; it's 143 pounds lighter than a standard manual DB9 with its restyled, harder-edged carbon-fiber panels, carbon-ceramic brakes, stripped-out cabin and manual transmission. But in price (likely to be around $200,000), timing and power (up 13 percent to 510 horsepower at 6,500 rpm and 420 pound-feet at 5,750 rpm), it could be seen as a Vanquish replacement. The way Bez sees it determines how it will drive.
Early DBSs suffered from a stiff, slightly awkward ride but this car finally seems to have it nailed; it manages to round off the worst of the harshness of these coarse, potholed roads while keeping the body in check. As Bez promised this is clearly not a hard-core, compromised, lightweight street racer; I could tolerate this ride all day.
But the DBS won't be a pushover; the traction is evidently mighty but the back end squirms under the hard acceleration. Bez is plainly a very skilled driver but even he fluffs a few changes, testament to the difficulty of managing a 5.9-liter 48-valve V12 through a six-speed manual box.
And what about the stuff we can't gauge from the passenger seat? "You will have a different sensation to the DB9," Bez promises, "but not in the sense of it being harder. It will feel more agile even if it is wider. It is more muscular but not without feel. You can take your big toe and feel the sensitivity in the brake, but it's not soft. The gearshift in a Porsche doesn't give you enough of a reaction, it's too soft. This is more rounded. The steering is good but we can get it better; it's not quite where the braking is yet."
So the DBS claims to offer more of everything — more power, more drama and more dynamism. And more importantly to Aston, more A-grade global exposure than an outfit this size could ever pay for, and more customers paying more money. But does it offer more enough to be twice the price of the Vantage? When we lever Bez out of the driver seat, we'll tell you.
Source Edmunds
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