Retro review: the Aston Martin DBS Volante (2009)

This review was first published in Issue 194 of Top Gear magazine (2009)

Before anything else, the noise, the monstrous, glorious, Technicolor noise. The DBS Volante makes the sort of sound that brings you out in goosepimples and excessive simile: roof down, rebounding off drystone hedges, you’re jammed in the centre of an orchestra pit, a bassy growl at low revs, climbing to a full-strings- and-woodwinds crescendo as you pummel the V12 towards 7,000rpm.

If ever there was a sound to justify the sheer rightness of internal combustion, this is it: steely, hard-edged and, when the exhaust bypass valves flip open at 4,000rpm, gigantically loud. Some foolish people say you’ll get the same effect with the windows down in the DBS coupe (yes, that’s The Bond Car, let’s get it out the way now). Ignore these people. The Volante makes a racket so deeply, deeply awesome that you think, “£170k? That’s not so bad...”

Ah. £170,000. It is, admittedly, quite a lot of money. Actually, it’s an awful lot of money: £50,000 more than the DB9 Volante, £11,000 more than the DBS coupe. Then again, the DBS Volante is an awful lot of car. For a start, just look at it. It’s... magnificent. No other word. Some foolish people – perhaps the very same ones who dole out that daft windows-down advice – may tell you the DBS isn’t as beautiful as the DB9, that it’s a bit too bling, a bit too fussy. Again, ignore these people. Look at those gorgeous ‘speed humps’ that hide the pop-up roll hoops on the rear deck. Top down, I reckon it’s an even better looking thing than the DBS coupe.

The adulation alone must be worth a few grand. Everybody loves the Volante. On a weekend jaunt to the far end of Cornwall, every stop at a petrol station – and there are many of these in a DBS – drew a crowd. In a Ferrari or a Lamborghini drop-top, a good number of these would be lining up the open roof with a bolus of phlegm, but there’s only love for the Aston. It’s just so gloriously bally British, so redolent of a happier past.

The engine, the same all-alloy 6.0-litre, 510bhp V12 as in the DBS, is a mighty unit, tractable and relaxed when you’re gentle with your right foot, blood-curdling when you push on. And fast, too: the Volante will hit 62mph in 4.3 seconds – exactly the same as the DBS coupe – and, even roof down, run all the way to 191mph while serving up more mid-range torque than you could reasonably use without a deluge of letters from Her Majesty’s arriving on your doorstep.

The Volante shares the DBS coupe’s super-stiff alloy tub and carbon-fibre body. The tub is so stiff, in fact, that it required no structural reinforcement to cope with the loss of the roof. Aston boasts the drop-top is only 25 per cent less stiff than the coupe, and just 115kg heavier.

But isn’t 25 per cent quite a lot, especially in something as full-on as a DBS? Surely something 25 per cent less stiff than, say, Usain Bolt would be a slightly pointy jellyfish? Herein lies the worry with the DBS Volante: why go to all the effort of creating a super-stiff, ultra-focussed supercar... and then chop the roof off to undo all your good work?

Dispel such worries. Unless you’re planning on drifting all the way around Alderley Edge, the Volante is plenty stiff. Yes, there’s a bit more flex than in the coupe, but you’d need to be pushing on at such a rate to find it that you’ll be in a big lot of danger if you get it wrong. For something so bloody big and front-engined and open-topped, the Volante is a genuinely focussed drive: hugely fast, impressively grippy and only a little bit scary. Though the clutch and steering are weighty, there’s a nice linear response and enough feedback to know when you’re getting close to the limit. The ride is stiff but compliant on the standard damper setting – so good, in fact, that I can’t imagine when you’d ever use the ‘Sports’ setting on real roads.

Since you’re going to tool around everywhere with the roof down, make sure you fit the wind baffle. At motorway speeds the buffeting is ferocious without the rear seat cover in place. At 191mph, your head will be sucked backwards through the headrest like lasagne through a pasta maker. You could argue that the baffle renders the rear seats useless – as you’ll have spotted, the Volante gets a pair of teeny chairs in the back, whereas the DBS Coupe is a strict two-seater – but this is unfair: they’re useless even without the baffle. You’ll still be able to fit a couple of drinks cartons and a pencil there. 

If meteorological conditions require you to raise the roof, it’s a simple job, the fabric roof raising or lowering in 14 seconds – three seconds quicker than the DB9. Thanks to a new Thinsulate layer (as worn by folk with emergency whistles and compasses), things are nice and quiet roof up... but who ever ordered quietness in a DBS Volante?

Get the roof down, show off the posh cabin for all the world to see. Whether our Madam Whiplash red leather interior gets your vote in the taste department, there’s no doubting it’s a magnificently appointed place to be, all soft cow hide, smart stitching and expensive-looking shiny stuff. A bit too shiny, sometimes: the information screen on the central dash is unreadable with the roof down, while the dash-mounted tweeters on the Bang and Olufsen stereo – which sounds, incidentally, very nearly as good as the engine – are so glossy in finish that they strobe streetlights straight onto your retinas. Minor niggles, but at £170,000, minor niggles are amplified.

None more so than that bloody giant gear lever – nicked off an Astra VXR, surely? – which is so big and so poorly positioned that it’s near impossible to flick between gears unless you’ve got freakishly short forearms and giant hands. There’s a lack of precision in the throttle, too.

But these flaws, this slight softness at the limit, matter less in the Volante than the coupe. epic though the coupe is, it never managed the out-and-out supercar thing quite as well as the Ferrari 599. The DBS has always been more of a deeply fast grand tourer, a DB9S, if you like, and it does that still better in convertible form. Even more than the coupe, the DBS Volante is an event, a riot of sheer gorgeousness and noise. If money’s no object, this is it. This is the Aston.

Verdict: Less focussed than the DBS coupe, and perhaps all the better for it. Footballers, ready your chequebooks.

6.0-litre V12
510bhp, RWD
0-62mph in 4.3secs, max speed 191mph
1,810kg
£170,000