Aston Martin DBX
What better than a sharp-suited SUV to steer cash-strapped Aston Martin into the future?
Inevitably (and slightly late), Aston does an SUV
The frothy fury that greeted the Porsche Cayenne in 2002 has mellowed to a grudging acceptance that high-performance luxury SUVs help sustain storied name plates we’d be far poorer without. If Porsche blazed a trail, Aston Martin is pushing against an open door with the DBX, its first SUV.
When Aston’s £158,000 rival to the Cayenne Turbo, Bentley Bentayga, Lamborghini Urus and Range Rover Sport SVR arrives in March 2020, it’ll feel inevitable, overdue even. With 72 per cent of Aston customers already owning SUVs and a new female demographic to tap, who’d be the CEO who didn’t dip a toe in the mud?
Creating the DBX is not, however, without its risks and considerable challenges. Porsche based the Cayenne on the Volkswagen Touareg, Bentley similarly exploited VW Group expertise, and Jaguar twinned its F-Pace with a Land Rover, leaning on six decades of off-road know-how. Those cars were manufactured at existing production plants too.
This is not how Aston has gone about creating the DBX. The ‘DB’ initials might honour the former owner who made tractors, but Aston has never produced an all-wheel-drive vehicle, let alone an SUV, and isn’t sharing a platform. So when the engineers and designers began work on the DBX, they found both the slate to be clean and the cupboard to be bare.
The DBX isn’t built at Aston’s Gaydon plant, but at a new facility in three former RAF super-hangers in St Athan, near Cardiff, using a more automated process with a mostly new workforce of 700, tasked with building the cars that could boost Aston sales from today’s 6500 towards 14,000 annual units. There’s a lot to get right first time.
To learn more, we’re visiting St Athan for a preview of the DBX with design director Marek Reichman, before passengering with chief engineer Matt Becker at Aston’s new Silverstone facility.
If Aston’s leap into the unknown with the DBX raises an eyebrow, its spec raises expectations. The new platform employs extruded aluminium chassis sections with cast nodes at each corner to provide a stiff, strong base for the suspension, and should benefit ride comfort and refinement as well as dynamics. Torsional rigidity stands at 27,000 Nm per degree (Vantage is 35,000 Nm per degree). A kerbweight of 2245kg is chunky, but splits the Bentayga and Urus. There’s double-wishbone front and multi-link rear suspension, triple-chamber air springs, Bilstein adaptive dampers, and an active roll-control system that does away with conventional anti-roll bars.
The 22-inch alloy wheels are shod with 285/40 front and wider 325/35 rear tyres – a nod to the DBX’s dynamic focus. A choice of summer, all-season and winter Pirellis is offered.
The Mercedes-AMG V8 we know from the Vantage and DB11, but here the 4.0-litre twin-turbo runs 542bhp and 516lb ft – a shade up on the Vantage, and a match for the Cayenne Turbo and Bentayga V8s on horsepower, if 51lb ft down on torque. It’s all sent through Merc’s nine-speed automatic gearbox (other Astons get eight speeds) to Mercedes-derived all-wheel drive with an active centre differential and electronically controlled rear locking diff.
Driving modes span maximum off-road ability in Terrain Plus, through Terrain, daily-driving GT, sportier Sport and sportiest Sport Plus, with the ride height adjustable through 75mm.
Becker has had to oversee a car that should be good for a 0-62mph time around 4.5 seconds, a top speed of 180mph, with sharp handling and serene ride, and the ability to wade through 500mm-deep water, tow 2.7 tonnes and carry a 100kg load on its roof. ‘It’s probably the hardest project I’ve ever done,’ he admits.
St Athan is still a few weeks from its official opening and the recruitment process still ongoing when we arrive, but already 76 DBXs have been produced and the workforce busily mills around in branded Aston Martin clothing. Reichman welcomes us to a preview room, the DBX concealed beneath a silver silk sheet. When the silk slips off, the DBX appears long and low-slung for an SUV, its wheelbase and bonnet strikingly extended, the front and rear overhangs noticeably short.
There are stronger hints of sporting, poised Cayenne than stately, upright Range Rover, but also Aston design cues to anchor it to Reichman’s second-century Astons (the headlights, grille and bluff Vantage-like rear in particular). The echoes of sports cars, shooting brakes and luxury limousines introduce a welcome twist.
A glasshouse that falls away faster than the roofline and the long wheelbase are key in creating the sense of length and relative lack of height – the DBX is said to have the longest wheelbase in its class, though remains shorter overall than a Bentayga. No DBX stats have been revealed yet, but ⊲
If Aston’s leap into the unknown with the DBX raises an eyebrow, its spec certainly raises expectations
It’s noticeable how keenly this relatively tall, heavy SUV turns and finds purchase
the Says Bentley Reichman: measures ‘We’ve 2995mm been between unconstrained the axles, by and the 5140mm platform overall. to create all the language of Aston Martin – it’s an uncompromised SUV, and you don’t have to compromise beauty to have practicality or usability. We started with a clean sheet; Bentley started the Bentayga with 96 hard points already defined.’ (Creating a new platform is, of course, an expensive business, and only makes sense if it gets used for many variants. Aston won’t confirm specific future derivatives, but Reichman hints: ‘Look at everything we do and there’s never an orphan. I’m not telling you whether it’ll be a hybrid or a V12, but we wouldn’t do a new platform and then leave it – we’re always looking to get more than one product.’) He highlights the distance between the leading edge of the front door and the centre point of the front wheels, the ‘dash to axle’ or ‘luxury tax’ as he has it. ‘Most SUVs have a short luxury tax. Ours is longer, and that gives you the longer bonnet and steeper A-pillar angle.’ The V8 is pushed far back in the engine bay, with those cast aluminium suspension turrets steeply inclined either side. What’s good for design is good for dynamics, explains Reichman – the DBX’s mass is split 54/46 front to rear, where rivals are more nose-heavy. Being free to place front and rear wheels where he likes isn’t the only benefit of creating your own platform rather than inheriting one, Reichman explains. Smaller, seemingly insignificant details have proved surprisingly advantageous too. He talks me through the sweep of the front wing, how it helps visually push the front wheels out through the body, and how the swooping line at the rear creates a similar effect. These body lines are complemented by the complex curvature of the glasshouse, with its frameless double-glazed side glass that both looks more sophisticated and helps lower the roofline. Had Aston even carried over a window regulator, the look would have been much different. ‘One of the most important parts of the door isn’t the outer or inner skin, it’s the rails that the glass runs down – the window regulator – and how that interacts with the safety cell within the door. When you carry over a platform, typically that’s what you carry over, and it sets a dimension. It means your glass does this and it does that – you cannot change it.’ Despite what appears a very ‘fast’ roofline, there’s room even for 6ft 4in tall Reichmann in the rear seats, and he points out that the long wheelbase reduces wheelarch intrusion, making the cabin more easily accessible, and that the 630 litres of boot space behind us is class-leading – so long as you only count the bit below the parcel shelf. Up front, the seats squish with deeper padding and adjust through a far greater range than Aston sports cars, from dropped-down sporting to perched-high commanding – good for Reichman, but also good for, say, a modestly sized Japanese woman. Elements including gearshift paddles fixed to the wheel, a digital instrument binnacle and transmission buttons and piano black trim echo the sports cars, but there are new elements too: a floating centre console, an actually round (heated) steering wheel that no longer features the awkward drive-mode thumb switches, smarter air vents, and a 12-inch infotainment screen far more neatly integrated into the instrument panel. There’s even a switch for lane-keeping assist, an Aston first. I’m shown around a version with a real metal finish that loops round the infotainment screen and climate controls, and an attractive light-wood veneer that helps lift this black cabin; Reichman stresses we’re looking at a fairly middling spec, even if it is focused and sporting and looks and feels of good quality. Later we get to see the tan leather interior of the car photographed for these pages, and far more sophisticated it looks too. The next week I’m in a prototype test hack, its body still partly disguised in a camouflaged wrap, the interior draped in black fabric to thwart prying eyes. Matt Becker is in the driver’s seat, and accelerates on to Silverstone’s Stowe Circuit. The surface is damp, the DBX in super-aggressive Sport Plus, stability control sent home early. When Becker keeps things tidy it’s noticeable how keenly this relatively tall, heavy SUV turns and finds purchase – the all-season tyres key in and it pivots eagerly through the apex of the first slow left-hander, understeer eerily and Down rich absent the higher next despite up straight, the a relatively rev the range; DBX ambitious not feels extravagantly eager entry from speed. lower fast, revs, no, but full-bodied there’s a more than generous surplus of performance to exploit. And the chassis isn’t without a sense of humour. Hard on the brakes, Becker swings the DBX aggressively at the next apex, using some bodyroll to induce oversteer. It feels almost like a rear-wheel-drive sports car, with lazy off-throttle pauses as it settles to a slide followed by prolonged flares of revs as the rear wheels spin. Other modes will prioritise all-weather security. The DBX’s all-wheel drive is key to this bandwidth. It uses a Magna centre diff, carbonfibre propshaft plus a combination of Mercedes powertrain components. The system defaults to 100 per cent rear-drive in normal conditions, but can divert up to 47 per cent to the front – that’s ⊲
actually the maximum the transmission can take, but Becker wouldn’t want to send any more power forwards anyway. It’s the right balance between dynamics and extra security in critical situations.
Though close, these aren’t the final chassis settings, and the next iteration will dial a little more bodyroll out of Sport Plus, though already the DBX has less roll-per-g than the Vantage, and has recorded faster corner speeds too, not just through traction-limited low-speed stuff, but faster corners too, partly because the bespoke Pirelli P Zero tyres approach grip levels offered by the more hardcore Corsa.
We switch from track to road, and to the middle GT setting, noticeably relaxing the DBX’s tensed muscles for a plusher ride. Making a car fun is second nature to Becker, even if an SUV’s height and weight make that tougher. The real challenge has been incorporating all the other attributes demanded of a luxury SUV. Early in development, the enormity of the task was apparent when Aston engineers convoyed to the Nürburgring in rival high-performance SUVs.
‘We took the Cayenne Turbo, Range Rover Sport SVR, Bentley Bentayga and the BMX X6 M, not just for the Nürburgring, but to understand their range of capability. We did 300km/h [186mph] on the autobahn, tested on the off-road track as well as the Nordschleife, and there was a sharp realisation there wasn’t much these cars couldn’t do.’
Triple-volume air springs were non-negotiable for their comfort and control, but Becker fought for the expensive 48-volt active anti-roll control system. It removes the compromise of a fixed anti-roll bar at either axle (a firmer ride, less wheel articulation). ‘We proved the compromise with two Cayennes – one with and one without active anti-roll control,’ he reveals.
Electrically powered individual motors can apply 1033lb ft of torque to the axle, significantly more than rivals. The system is so powerful it could actually make the DBX roll in the opposite direction to the corner. It must complement diff, steering, air spring and damper tuning.
Who to calibrate such a complex system? Becker had worked with Jon Croxford for a decade at Lotus, until Croxford took his chassis expertise first to Jaguar, then to Bentley where he tuned the Bentayga’s 48-volt active anti-roll. Small world…
Croxford joined the project, feeding in his requirements to the all-new platform, developing the chassis, with Becker cross-checking progress. ‘I wanted it to sit dynamically between Range Rover Sport SVR and the Lamborghini Urus,’ says Becker – so sharper handling with a little trade in refinement versus the SVR, and a chassis less aggressive but more comfortable than the Lambo.
From the passenger seat, the DBX already strikes a nice balance between eagerly flowing down the road while treating its occupants to a
comfortable, relatively quiet ride, the V8 sounding warm, purposeful and overtly sporting without being tiresome. The ride’s not yet perfect, with a few lumps here and there, as the engineers finesse impact isolation at the front, but this is a tricky road, one Aston favours because of the numerous single-wheel inputs – sometimes the active anti-roll actually drives the motor in the same direction as the wheel, effectively de-coupling the anti-roll bar and helping avoid the ‘head-toss’ of traditional anti-roll bars. Make an aggressive steering input and the system firms back up.
Barely 30 minutes since we finished powersliding around Silverstone, we’re powering up a steep, muddy bank, then coasting down the other side – air suspension jacked up in Terrain Plus, deft footwork deputising for hill-descent control that’s not yet functional in this prototype.
In early planning, Aston targeted Audi A6 Allroad levels of off-road ability, but the hardware essential to on-road comfort and dynamics also helped lift DBX to a level more comparable to a Cayenne. A long wheelbase ultimately limits the breakover angle, and a Land Rover will be more capable overall, but as we crawl through mud, stare at nothing but sky and glide smoothly over yumps that are an effort to walk over, it’s clear the DBX can cope with far more than most owners will ever ask of it. The big questions now are how many people will ask for a DBX, and what the finished car is like to drive. We’ll find out in the next few months.