ASTON MARTIN DBX 707

Our pulse is still racing following a Silverstone track test of the uprated super-SUV. Now to see if it has retained the DBX's real-road talents

- MARK TISSHAW

TESTED 14.3.22, SARDINIA, ITALY ON SALE NOW PRICE £190,000

TESTER'S NOTE

Unsurprisingly, Aston expects to break the SUV lap record at the Nürburgring with the DBX 707, taking the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT's crown. MT

A headline power output can often give the biggest clue to a car's positioning in a line-up. In the case of the Aston Martin DBX 707, that 707PS (or 697bhp) is the highest power output yielded to date from Mercedes-AMG's superb twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 petrol engine, which quickly signifies the latest version of the SUV as the range-topper, and by some margin.

That it indeed is. Yet this is a high-performance range-topper that goes far beyond the usual ‘uprate it, lower it, stiffen it' approach, being more akin to a facelift or a remastering. The DBX done better, in other words.

Not that the DBX was wanting for much. It got a four-and-a-half-star Autocar road test rating less than two years ago, after all.

Yet since then, Aston Martin has appointed a new CEO in Tobias Moers, who has already overhauled the Vantage with the F1 Edition (effectively the car that he thought the Vantage always should have been), and now it's the turn of the DBX to get a similar treatment.

The brief for the DBX 707, in development for only 14 months, was thus: become a performance flagship without sacrificing the DBX's long-legged grand touring credentials.

The DBX 707, which our heart rate has only just recovered from meeting on track at Silverstone last month, is quite something visually, for starters.

Most of the styling changes are necessitated by the need to increase cooling (the front daylight-running lights have had to be redesigned, for instance, and to then improve the aerodynamics and reduce drag.