Aston Martin’s DBX combines a sports car’s pace with SUV grunt
By Rohit Joon , April 9 , 2020
It’s a luxury SUV priced from $357,000 but right now the digital dashboard in my Aston Martin DBX is flashing warnings like a pinball machine that’s just ejected a ball from an otherwise certain jackpot.
As well as airbags and headlights, a fast-flickering assortment of orange and red messages suggests the tyres are flat and the brake assist system has given up.
Fortunately the brakes are still working, the Pirelli rubber is inflated – and there is a perfectly valid explanation for the quasi disco of messages.
Rolling around in the dirt
The dusty, well-travelled car I’m driving is a prototype that’s been through a life of unerring punishment to ensure issues like this aren’t experienced once cars start rolling out of dealerships in mid-2020.
As I slither through a rock-strewn gorge in the Middle Eastern nation of Oman it’s clear there are many more kilometres of punishment for this car yet.
Just the beginning
Aston Martin chief engineer Matt Becker reassures me these cars are only at the beginning of their usable life, likely to end up in a crusher once done or morphed into something else for a future project.
“These cars will be very, very, very heavily used,” he says, adding that the development program for the DBX is bigger than any the British manufacturer has embarked on previously. It involved testing across the world, with this last blast in the unwelcoming dust of Oman.
The DBX is the first SUV from the brand best known for keeping superspy James Bond in a suitably swanky set of wheels. While Aston Martin has been relatively sluggish to the SUV party, it insists there are advantages to being able to analyse the entrants from rivals as diverse as Volkswagen, BMW, Porsche, Bentley and Lamborghini.
“The team’s respect level for these cars went up … exponentially in terms of how much range of capability these cars have and what’s expected of them,” says Becker.
It prompted a rethink of how the sports car maker developed cars, suddenly having to test off-road and ensure the DBX could tow – as well as being sporty, fast and fun.
Make it fun
It doesn’t take many corners to establish driving enjoyment was a target of the DBX. The steering on our car lacks feel – that’s one of the many parameters to undergo final tuning before production begins in April – but it’s satisfyingly direct and what’s going on at ground level suggests the team of development engineers under Becker’s watch has achieved its goal.
It’s not about to reset any fast SUV benchmarks – Lamborghini has that one licked – but the DBX is very much in the hunt, the throaty burble of the V8 and the intelligent apportioning of grunt ensuring rapid progress.
Plus it makes some lovely noises, although Becker is intent on making things meaner.
Not-so-bumpy rides
More impressive is the way the DBX devours bumps.
Even in its most aggressive Sport+ driving mode the triple chamber air suspension is respectably compliant. More so if you’re driving gently, at which point a computer ignores the request for firmness and instead relaxes things.
It’s all about maximising the everyday usability “because for a car like this why would you want to be uncomfortable in it?”, reasons Becker.
Brains and brawn
And while there are Aston Martin staples – the push button gear selectors on the dash and beautifully stitched leather lacing the dash and seats – there’s also genuine usefulness elsewhere.
Such as the deep centre console and back seats that dish up loads of head room. It’s a comfortable space, yet one that lives up to promise of character and X-factor.
All of which adds a new dimension to a brand that’s known for beauty as much as brawn.
Specifications
Car: Aston Martin DBX
On sale: mid-2020
Price: $357,000
Engine: 4.0-litre twin turbo V8
Power/Torque: 405kW/700Nm
Transmission: 9-speed auto, four-wheel drive
0-100km/h: 4.5 seconds
Fuel use: 14.3L/100km