Aston cracks car design’s toughest code
Think convertible versions of fixed-heads are heavier, floppier, slower and less fun to drive? Think again…
Volante means ‘flying’ in Italian, and that’s a good way to describe the trajectory of Aston Martin in general in 2018. Even today, Aston’s range of cars looks wider and stronger than at any point in its 104-year history. Yet today is only just the beginning – because also in the pipeline is the Valkyrie hypercar and its track-based derivative that will, says Aston, ‘be as fast as a Formula 1 car around Silverstone’. Then there’s the rebirth of the Lagonda brand, an all-new mid-engined Ferrari 488 rival that’s due in 2021, and a range of SUVs that will appear at broadly the same time. Aston, as they say, is on a roll.
But right now it’s the all-new £159,900 Volante that we’re interested in most. Powered by the same 503bhp, 4.0-litre twinturbo V8 that propels the excellent new DB11 V8 Coupé, the Volante represents a stepchange in capability when it comes to open-top Aston Martins, not just technically but visually and dynamically, too.
Everyone knows that when you remove the roof of a car and replace it with a piece of cloth you take away its torsional strength, and therefore its chassis and suspension become far harder to tune. At the same time you also lose luggage space, especially when, as in the Volante, that roof is powered by electric motors so that it glides neatly – and almost silently – into the rear bodywork. And that’s to say nothing about how the styling of the open car tends to suffer beside its coupé equivalent, particularly from the B-pillars backwards, due to the fact that the rear end rises in height to accommodate the hood and all its gubbins. Plus, of course, all of the aforementioned adds weight, which then blunts the performance and, again, makes the suspension have to work far harder.
For the average team of car designers and engineers, the open-top car is the proverbial nightmare, quite frankly. Yet the Volante has been a staple for Aston Martin since 1965, which is why Aston’s designers and engineers have pulled all the stops out to make this latest Volante a) as good looking as it is, especially around the hindquarters, b) as sharp as it is dynamically beside the coupé, and c) as good to drive as it is, period.
Without going into exhaustive detail about how they’ve achieved such stunning results,
in short there is extra bracing at both the front and back plus significantly stiffer springs and dampers, all of which have made the Volante, if anything, the sweetest of all three versions of the DB11 on the move. Its steering, in particular, is quite lovely, with a touch sharper turn-in than the fixed-heads and lots of feel mid-corner.
There’s also a very trick new electric hood system – it lowers in 14 seconds, raises in 16 – that stores more neatly than before into the rear bodywork, which has allowed the designers to really go to town with the Volante’s lower-than-normal rear deck. The result is a quite stunning-looking car when viewed either in profile or dead-on from the rear. What’s more, thanks to its clever packaging, the hood also takes up a fair bit less space than previously, meaning you get more room in the rear seats and boot. The rear chairs, for instance, are spacious enough to feature ISOFIX attachments for the first time ever in a Volante.
But it’s the way the Volante drives that’s most impressive of all; not just the way it
‘the volante, if anything, is the sweetest of the three versions of the db11 on the move’
steers but also the way it goes, the way it sounds, the way it changes gear and especially the way it rides and handles. Despite weighing 110kg more than the V8 coupé DB11, it feels not a lot slower in a straight line. The torque flow from the twin-turbo V8 is strong even at 2000rpm, and at 4500rpm it feels seriously rapid in any of the first six gears within the excellent eight-speed ZF paddleshift auto.
There are three drive modes to choose from for both the drivetrain and the chassis, so, in theory, six different modes in all: Normal, Sport and Sport+. In Normal the Volante feels calm, sounds reasonably serene and rides a touch more firmly than you might expect but without any unwanted intrusions from below. In Sport the car feels a fraction more alive, although you can, of course, keep the chassis in Normal and put the drivetrain in Sport and vice versa. And then in Sport+ for both it feels – and sounds – like a completely different animal, with more aggressive mapping for gearbox and throttle, much louder machinations from the exhaust, including pops and bangs on the overrun, and even sharper responses from the chassis.
The Volante’s wide-ranging personalities are best enjoyed with the hood down, predictably, when wind noise is impressively well suppressed at least up to three figures. But even with the hood up the Volante can play the refined, smooth driving mile-eater one minute and crisp responding sports car the next, depending on the mode you select.
Faults? I’m not sure the cabin feels like £160k’s worth in certain aspects, the not-soexpensive-looking plastic air vents being the most obvious culprit. But beyond that it’s an absolute belter of a car, one that drives even better than it looks. W hich, in this case, really does mean something.