Aston Martin DBS Superleggera Volante review

The DBS Superleggera Volante is a quarter-million pound car. Prices are set to start at £247,500, but it’s nigh-on impossible any will leave the factory without plenty of personalisation heaped on top, and once you start adding the rather gorgeous carbon fibre garnish and bespoke ultra-glittered paint, the price can skyrocket with dangerous ease. The orange car in the gallery topped out at £301,000…

Claimed economy is 20mpg, which is thoroughly realistic if you’re cruising, but beware that this motor likes a swig if you clog it – reckon on high teens as a realistic average. But see, if you were worried about fuel bills, you’d probably have defaulted to the DB11 Volante and its, erm, parsimonious V8. It starts at just under £160,000, and it’s less than half a second slower from 0-62mph than the DBS.

On a rational level, there’s no justification for the DBS Volante, then. The DB11 is almost as beautiful, almost as fast, sounds great, has the same interior and to every passer-by, it’s just as much of an Aston Martin. Which means they’ll love it. Astons charm in a way no Ferrari or Bentley can. They walk the tightrope of not being gauche or ostentatious, perhaps because of the Bond connection, or because they’re so pretty. 

But the DBS has so much swagger, and so much pace (not to mention its brooding, not-long-for-this-world V12 sound) that the world would be a poorer place without it. Worth £90k more than a DB11? On paper, no, but to drive one, to even see one lope past, is to love one.