“Come and drive an Aston Martin in the south of France,” they said. “It’ll be fun,” they added. Reader, they were right. After all, who wouldn’t enjoy hustling a factory-fresh supercar through Alpine switchbacks, then soaking up stares on the Côte d’Azur?
The acid test comes later, though, when you reach the hotel after a long day and many miles behind the wheel. Given the choice, would you retire to the bar for a chilled vin blanc or decide to carry on driving? In the case of the DB12 S, I’d gladly have brimmed the tank with super, pointed its long nose northwards and settled in for the 800-or-so miles back to London. Sadly, Aston Martin’s PR team had other ideas.
The DB12 S is pitched as a ‘halo model’, with more power, added aero and a sharper chassis. In truth, it’s more akin to a mid-life facelift for a car that is now three years old, and the regular DB12 will likely soon be phased out. “With the DBX and Vantage, we’ve already seen the ‘S’ derivatives taking more than 95 percent of sales,” says Neil Hughes, Aston Martin’s director of product strategy.
So what’s new? Well, the 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8 gains a token extra 20bhp, corralling 690 braked horses, plus an unchanged 590lb ft from 3000rpm. Factor in a quicker-shifting automatic gearbox and the newly standard carbon-ceramic brakes, which reduce unsprung weight by 27kg, and 0-60mph now takes 3.4 seconds – a tenth quicker than its ‘standard’ sibling. Opting for the Akrapovic titanium exhaust, as fitted to our test car, delivers “improved bass frequencies” and saves a further 11.7kg.
Before we collect the keys, design chief Marek Reichman walks us around a DB12 S to explain what has changed. The “much more assertive” restyle includes a deeper front splitter, larger bonnet louvres, gloss black sills and ‘S’ badges in red glass enamel beneath the side strakes. A small lip spoiler juts from the rear deck and a new diffuser wraps around vertically stacked quad tailpipes. You can specify various graphics packages via Aston Martin’s bespoke ‘Q’ department, too.
Beneath its svelte skin, the DB12’s adaptive dampers, rear e-differential and torque vectoring Brake Slip Control system have been all recalibrated to tighten body control and provide more linear feedback. The result, says Hughes, is a vehicle that “in dynamic terms, is more aligned with a Ferrari Amalfi than a Bentley Continental GT.”
You certainly sit lower than in the straight-backed Bentley, cocooned by a wide centre console with the car’s fulsome hips filling the door mirrors. Granted, some of the plastic switchgear wouldn’t pass muster in Crewe, but quality is otherwise hard to fault and the modestly sized touchscreen is straightforward to use. Like other Aston Martins, the DB12 S benefits from CarPlay Ultra, enabling iPhone users to access vehicle-specific functions, such as switching off the ADAS systems, without exiting the Apple interface.
Prod the start button – now ringed by red anodised aluminium – and the ‘hot vee’ engine wakes up with a brusque bark. Budding MI6 agents take note: a silent, electric getaway is not an option here. The DB12 S settles to a hushed murmur at cruising speeds, but as the revs soar and the switchable exhaust valves open wide, the full, AMG-derived sturm und drang blasts to the fore. In full flight, it sounds wickedly unhinged, like an Avro Lancaster strafing the French countryside.
This split personality is echoed in how the ‘S’ drives. In default GT mode it feels as long-striding and luxurious as the DB12 ever did, with brawny performance and a calmly pliant ride. But twist the dial to Sport Plus and this 1820kg 2+2-seat coupe throws decorum to the wind and attacks the road like a fully-fledged supercar.
Like all recent Aston Martins, from the Vantage to the Valhalla, this DB12’s dynamics were signed off by Simon Newton, director of vehicle performance, and an engineer whose talents for chassis tuning rival those of Matt Becker at JLR or Raffaele de Simone at Ferrari. From its carefully calibrated throttle to the subtle way the e-diff intervenes at the limit, the car feels instantly intuitive and on your side.
The DB12 is the spiritual heart of the Aston Martin range and the ‘S’ could have shifted too far from that territory, becoming more John Wick than James Bond. Thankfully, it builds on the DB12’s strengths, making the car even more accomplished and desirable.
At £205,000 for the coupe or £218,500 for the drop-top Volante, it’s a fraction more expensive than a new Porsche 911 Turbo S, but I know which one I’d rather jump in and drive back to Calais. The white wine can wait.
View the DB12 S on Aston Martin’s website here.
