ULTIMATE MARVEL

Aston Martin's DBS is bowing out with the limited-edition 770 Ultimate, which sees its twin-turbocharged V12 tuned to deliver a ferocious 759bhp and it's the best the model has ever been

- JOHN BARKER

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AN UNSTOPPABLE force meets an immovable object? It's a paradox that runs through the Iain Banks novel Walking on Glass, and it's got into my head as I drive the DBS 770 Ultimate across Wales. The DBS is an unmistakably heavy car. The steering efforts reflect this and you sense it when you scythe into a corner. And yet when the twin-turbo V12 comes on boost on just a modest throttle opening, the 770 Ultimate seems to weigh nothing... until you want it to stop or change direction again, and on these dip and dive, nip and tuck Welsh B-roads, you want it to do that a lot.

This last-of-the-line DBS ticks a lot of boxes on the list of 'Things a car can do to intimidate you': it's very expensive, it's very wide, you sit so low you can't see the bonnet, and it's obviously heavy yet ludicrously accelerative. Sounds like the perfect recipe for a nervy, sweaty-palm drive, especially given the rain-slick roads, and yet I'm relishing the challenge, absorbed in the process, engaged with the car and exploiting its considerable strengths to make prodigious progress. This is a DBS like no other before it.

If you polled everyone who's driven what we can now call the standard DBS, asking them what the car needs, the answer 'more power' would come way down the list below a carbon fibre carriage clock and an Alcantara umbrella stand. But more power is what the DBS 770 Ultimate has, the uplift from 715 to 759bhp (770 PS) making it the most powerful series production Aston Martin of all time. It even pips the limited-run One-77 and its 750bhp, 7.3-litre, naturally aspirated V12.