EARTH MOVER

THE FUTURE OF ASTON MARTIN RESTS ON THE ROAD SHOULDERS OF THE DBX, THE BRAND’S FIRST SUV. ITS SUCCESS IS PIVOTAL TO THE FIRM’S FUTURE FINANCIAL FOUNDATIONS. NO PRESSURE, THEN

- BEN MILLER

MOMENT OF CLARITY number one: if you were asked to create a luxury SUV that drove with the alacrity the Aston Martin name demands, you might seek to pull together a team and a parts toolkit not dissimilar to those behind this car, the most important model in the marque’s history.

The pandemic torpedoed Aston’s original DBX Californian launch plans, leaving ever so slightly less exotic Silverstone to host our first meeting with the car in production guise. Aston has an engineering centre on the Stowe circuit, nestled within the curves of the F1 track, and I get a guided tour with chief vehicle attribute engineer Matt Becker. We head past banks of studious engineers at their desks, up the complex’s airfield-style control tower – “Imagine a couple of deck chairs on the roof for the Grand Prix” – and on into the bustling pit garage-style workshops.

We pause in the last of these garages, its space filled with dampers hung like Spanish hams and, between them, the equipment to strip and rebuild them. It’s here, where the DBX’s enormous air-sprung shocks dwarf those of the Aston sports car hung nearby, that the enormity of the project – “New platform, new factory, new everything,” says Becker – is made abundantly clear. Even my dog is well aware that Aston’s future depends on the success of its first SUV, but ponder for a moment all that’s gone into the DBX and you can’t help but feel optimistic – and a little sad that ex-CEO Andy Palmer, the father of the DBX, has left the building.