Escape velocity
Gaydon’s old-school GT-turned-supercar reaches a giddy climax
Things are looking up for Aston Martin. The share price has rallied by more than 100 per cent in the last six months, and the Formula 1 team are flying thanks to a crafty former champ behind the wheel and some significant work on the car over the winter.
The DBS 770, being at heart a GT, isn’t adorned with any F1 team badges. But still – what a GT. The balls-out, last-of-the-line, final hurrah for the DBS is in many ways closing in on supercar territory. Only 499 770 Ultimates will be built, split between 300 coupes and 199 roadsters. Rest assured, you’ve missed your chance.
Cosmetic alterations include a little nip and tuck in the form of a ‘horseshoe’ vent in the bonnet and a larger diffuser at the rear. Loads of carbonfibre too. Maybe even too much carbonfibre. The new 21-inch wheels have caused a stir on the internet, but to these eyes they add to the car’s glow up.
The 5.2-litre quad-cam twin-turbo V12 beast has been upped to 759bhp (from 715bhp) thanks to a new air intake and increased boost pressure, and there’s a revised calibration for the adaptive damping system. The changes are all intended to improve the driver’s connection to the car without compromising the DBS’s grand-touring capability.
But the most significant change doesn’t have much to do with the additional power or added stiffness. It’s about the engine calibration and torque shaping. There’s a new engine map that makes acceleration more linear and feel more naturally aspirated. Peak torque for a regular DBS drops like the anchor on an oil tanker at 1800rpm. But for the 770 there’s technically not a specific number as it changes from gear to gear. It sounds bizarre, but you need to work all 5204cc to get the most out of it.
It’s glorious. Listening to that V12 howl its way past 5000rpm is special enough to leave you tingling. One of the other benefits – appreciated on a wet day in Oxfordshire – is that it makes it easier to drive as that ham
mer of torque comes later in the rev range. We only felt the guiding hands of the traction control god four times in two hours.
The 0-62mph time of 3.4 seconds isn’t spectacular for something with supercar pace these days. A chap in a Tesla Model 3 even caught up while we were enjoying the A424. But was he having as much fun? Three blips down the ’box in Sport mode while approaching Stow-on-the-Wold to hear the delicious overrun is enough to answer that question.
Turn-in is sensational for something this big and heavy, and the feedback through the steering wheel is decidedly old school. The rear end feels soft, unless you switch it to the hardest suspension setting, where it feels decidedly un-soft on broken asphalt.
Sure, the eight-speed can be a bit lethargic when left to its own devices, but you’ll most likely want to drive it in manual mode. Okay, it’s big and not that practical. Yes, the infotainment screen does look like a knockoff iPad from the market. But the 770 is amazing and old-school and quite silly and a fitting end to the life of the DBS.
The changes improve the driver’s connection to the car without compromising the DBS’s grand-touring capability