DRIVE
The new DB11 delivers GT comfort and supercar performance in a very different way from the Bentley Continental GT Speed
The DB11 is everything that a modern Aston Martin should be, but how does it fare against Bentley’s Continental GT?
Running fast towards my rendezvous with the Aston Martin DB11, the challenge it is about to take on is clear. The Bentley Continental GT Speed under my right foot doesn’t feel like a car in need of replacement at all.
And if it seems odd to be banging on about a rather old Bentley in a test whose primary focus is a brand-new Aston Martin, I’d ask you to bear with me for the duration of this paragraph because this stuff matters. If you and I are to understand the nature of the challenge, we must peer beyond the immediately evident — the respective power-to-weight ratios, looks, mass and age gap. We must appreciate that in its sense of solidity and sheer structural integrity, the Bentley has a quality as easy to appreciate in reality as it is difficult to express in numbers on a page.
For customers who must value what a car would be like to live with as much as what it would be like to drive, this talent is not only compelling but, if the Aston is to win here, must also be overcome.
The DB11 is how a 21st century Aston should look: modern, dynamic, respectful to its past but not manacled to it. It looks small next to the Bentley, but it’s not really.
Each is powered by a large displacement, quad-cam, twin-turbo 12-cylinder engine and sends drive to the road via an eight-speed automatic gearbox. But whereas the Bentley motor retains its curious W formation and directs its power to all four corners of the car, the Aston has a traditional V12, rear-wheeldrive layout.
The Continental GT Speed appears to hold the balance of size and power, prising 626hp from 6.0 litres and an astonishing 840Nm of torque, compared with the 600hp and 700Nm offered by the 5.2-litre DB11.
But once you’ve offset that against the Bentley’s immense 2,320kg kerb weight, it is the comparatively dainty 1,910kg Aston that looks far and away the most potent.
Entering the Aston directly from the Bentley fuels the narrative suggesting that for all they have in common in terms of power, price and apparent positioning, these two represent very different takes on the classic British grand touring theme.
The Bentley cabin architecture, so effortlessly cool in 2003, now looks fusty in its traditionalism. Its shapes are as attractive as ever, but in its analogue dials and Neolithic multimedia system lie the most telling evidence of the car’s age.
It’s tempting to praise the DB11 cabin to the skies simply because an adult of above-average height can now find a comfortable driving position, while the instruments are actually legible. Even by the standards of today, this is a good Aston Martin cabin. Its look is modern without attempting the self-consciously avant-garde, and although the ancillary control switches and main infotainment display betray their Mercedes-Benz roots too readily, they all work intuitively and effectively.
Both cars have rear seating that’s close to
unusable for most. The Bentley is better and has the bigger boot but, in both cases, unless those up front are of compact proportions, the area behind the seats should be regarded as additional storage space.
The Aston’s new engine is louder than the Bentley’s on start-up. While the Continental must satisfy itself with brewing up indistinct, far-off thunder under its bonnet, the DB11’s voice is sharp, layered and unmistakably that of a V12. It doesn’t sound turbocharged at all.
The stats say the DB11 is not much quicker off the line than the Bentley, but the stats don’t know how much of the Bentley’s getaway pace is down to power and how much to traction. But your backside knows instantly. The Conti is properly, majestically quick, but the Aston at full chat will elicit small involuntary noises from its occupants, and the Bentley can’t quite do that. Nor can its unconventionally arranged 12 cylinders come close to the symphonic snarl of the Aston’s.
The next task is to decide the best speed at which to angle some two tonnes of DB11 (with me on board) into a tricky, off-camber curve. The weight, wheelbase and spring rates all advise a conservative approach, but the confidence with which the car has addressed the road so far says something different.
So you go with your gut and are rewarded by all the poise, grip and balance you could have hoped for — more, in fact, than you could reasonably expect from a car like this. The ride is beautiful, yet the body control at high speed in a difficult corner is superb. With steering that is quick and precise, it makes placing the car accurately an automatic process, which is probably the single greatest determinant of not merely how fast you go but also how much fun you have going fast.
That the Bentley doesn’t simply give up in the face of such an assured performance says all you need to know about how far this car has come over the years. Driving it fast is a less natural process because you’re inclined to mentally divide the road into straights and corners rather than look at it as one organic whole.
You barrel along the straights but overstop the car for each curve because the car is bigger and less wieldy than the Aston and it feels it. So you play to its strengths, turning in carefully but reapplying the power earlier to exploit its fabulous traction.
In its own serene way, this, too, is fun, albeit less for what you’re doing and more for what you’re doing it in. But the Aston is the better driver’s car, and by an appreciable margin.
But can it cruise as well the Bentley? Yes and no. The DB11 has the best ride quality of any car of this kind I can recall, and it’s quiet enough for a 500km day to be relished rather than endured. The Bentley is probably a little quieter, but it’s not as deft as the Aston’s. But you do feel impregnable inside the Bentley, on board one of the best built cars on earth. There’s probably not a car out there in which you’d feel much safer or more secure than the Conti, and for all its talents, the Aston can’t do this.
That’s not going to snatch victory from the Aston’s jaws here, though. The truth is that against a car designed just after the turn of the century, nothing less than a convincing win for the DB11 would suffice here, and that is what has been achieved.
It’s not a rout. The Continental GT Speed remains a class act despite its weight, ageing telematics and the awkward fact that the cheaper V8 S is a far better, more engaging car to drive.
But Aston Martin can relax for now, content that its most important product in more than a decade has passed its first test with space to spare.