Aston Martin DBX review: foray into SUVs a mixed blessing

The Aston Martin DBX is an all-new car that will compete in a sector of the market where the company has never been before.

Aston Martin DBX. Picture: supplied

The Aston Martin DBX is an all-new car that will compete in a sector of the market where the company has never been before. And to make things even riskier, this SUV is being built in a new, untested factory and launched into showrooms that have seen significantly fewer customers since the start of the pandemic.

Other small brands around the world – Lamborghini, Bentley, Ferrari and so on – are owned by big car companies, so they have access to all the latest tech and a financial cushion. Whereas Aston Martin’s owners include a man who made his fortune by selling trousers. He and a consortium have invested $900m in Aston, which sounds a lot, but that’s roughly what Renault would spend on a new heater knob.

The DBX was therefore designed on a shoestring by a company whose share price was wearing margarine trousers on a slide into oblivion. Plans to make the DBX all-electric were shelved early on, and the proposed fitting of a new V6 hybrid postponed, so it has ended up with a 4-litre Mercedes engine and lots of Mercedes kit that was bang up to date about 10 years ago.

After such a difficult birth, I was not expecting it to be any good, but if I say that all of England will be very angry with me, because not liking an Aston Martin in England is illegal. It’s like saying you don’t like the Queen.

So. Here goes. The first thing that surprised me about the DBX is the size: almost 5cm longer than a Range Rover. It’s much lower, though, and that’s what makes it so handsome. Well, that and the pillarless doors and the huge wheels and the bonnet blades. I was also taken by the endless options. You can choose what colour badge you’d like, and select a Pet Pack or Snow Pack; you can have a safe under the front passenger seat and a gun cabinet in the boot. So by the time you’ve been on the configurator, the price is going to be way more than $357,000.

High prices have been a problem for Aston in recent years, because the interiors of its cars never really felt special enough. That certainly isn’t the case with this SUV, though. Some may criticise the ageing Mercedes infotainment system but, actually, it’s from a time before all these systems got far too clever for their own good. It works well.

I didn’t like the way the leather has been stitched so the seams are visible, though. As one reviewer said, it looks like botched plastic surgery; the centre console seam also digs into your arm as you drive along, which is very annoying.

But it’s not as annoying as the bumpiness of the ride. When I read that the DBX had active anti-roll bars I assumed it would glide along like a hovercraft. But it doesn’t. Partly due to the big wheels, I suspect, it crashes hard into potholes, and on the motorway it literally wobbles. If you try to sing to pass the time, you will get a very clear understanding of what’s meant by vibrato.

Sure, the DBX is a fast and rewarding car when you are in the upper echelons of the rev range and the differentials are busy whizzing power to whichever wheel is best able to handle it. But nobody who wants an SUV wants to drive like this. They’d gladly put up with a bit more lean and a bit more understeer if it meant they could relax on the way home from work. Off road? I don’t know, to be honest, and you never will either, because although it has all the right tech it sits on fat, fast, low-profile tyres, so the instant you show it a field of wet grass you’ll know you’re going home on foot.

This is all very worrying because I’m heading to the point when I have to tell all you Aston fans that the new car is not much good. However, I genuinely have a problem with most of the boutiquey SUVs out there: the Bentley Bentayga is still no beauty; the Rolls-Royce Cullinan is wilfully awful to behold; the Lamborghini Urus doesn’t quite have the courage of its convictions. The Jaguar F-Pace is good, but in a lower league, and the Alfa Romeo Stelvio serves as a constant reminder you should have got the Giulia Quadrifoglio instead.

So, looking at the competition, the DBX starts to make sense. And it continues to make sense right up to the moment you remember the car that started this particular ball rolling 50 years ago: the Range Rover. The first is still by far the best.

ASTON MARTIN DBX

ENGINE: 4.0-litre V8, twin-turbo (405kW/700Nm). Average fuel 14.3 litres per 100km TRANSMISSION: Nine-speed automatic, all-wheel drive

PRICE: From $357,000

RATING: ★★